So Many Little Things
by Cyprith
Summary: There's more to Butch Deloria than a bad attitude. And there's more to Little Miss One-oh-One than a gun and a shining reputation. There's the two of them... together. Butch/OC 50 prompt table
1. Foreword

So Many Little Things

Butch/OC

Rated PG-13 (swearing, violence, mentions of sex)

50 prompt table

—0—

Author's Note:

I have all these ideas about Butch and his vaultie, but no where to put them. I love the back story I started about the two of them in _Forever_, but I don't want to write out the minutiae of their lives in the vault. So I figured, maybe a prompt table. I made this one all by my onesies and if you'd like to play with it too, you can find it on my live journal (profile page—get thee hence). Just remember to credit.

Story Note:

Traditionally with a prompt table, you write little answers to the prompts and work really hard to keep them at 100 words each. I'm not going to do that. Because Butch just doesn't swing that way, baby. Er… never mind.

So, this story functions in more or less the same universe as _Forever_ but you DO NOT need to have read that one first. It'd just be nice if you did because, well… Butch needs his lovin'. There will be 50 chapters to this—one for each prompt—and they'll be of varying lengths. The chapters will meander in a vaguely linear direction, but they will often jump great spans of time.

—0—

Onward to ficage.


	2. Bloody Nose

16. Bloody Nose

Words: 871

Summary: Butch turns seven, has a horrible day and promptly forgets all about it at the sight of a pretty girl… or something like that, anyway.

—0—

Butch hated birthdays. They were never any good, but this one really took the cake. At least before there had been someone to pat him on the head and say something vaguely encouraging like, "_Another year older, sport?"_ But not anymore. His dad was gone and there wasn't anything in the world that was going to bring him back

He would have liked to try wishing though. Even if wishing on cakes was for stupid babies, it would have been worth a shot. It didn't even have to be a really big cake… a sweet roll would have been nice. Or at least a pat on the head and a _happy birthday, kiddo_. But his mom was crying in her room again and he knew better than to knock when she got like that. She was mean when she cried and she probably didn't even know it was his birthday, anyway.

Butch picked his father's old switchblade up off the metal floor and began cutting holes in the side of a box for lack of anything better to do. He hated this stupid place. He'd seen everything there was to see in this stupid Vault already. He wanted to go Outside to see the places his dad told all those stories about. Nothing interesting was happening _here_. Same old people walking through the same old hallways every day. And you couldn't even _look_ at the boarded up hallways or people got all funny about it and started yelling about things like _restricted area_ and _for the good of the vault_ and _can't afford any missteps at this stage in the game._

"Are you playing a game?"

He jumped at the sound of the voice and spun around, knife at the ready. But the girl didn't flinch—just settled down on the corrugated steel next to him and fixed him with an expectant look.

"Well? Are you?"

"No," he snapped and wiped his nose on his sleeve, noting with disgust it was still bleeding from where stupid Mack had punched him. "And even if I was, I wouldn't want to play with you." He wiped his nose again and looked her over. "Who are you anyway?"

She didn't seem to care that he didn't want her there—only smiled and leaned back against the wall like she owned the vault. Maybe she did own the vault. He'd never seen her before and there was no one else in the vault with red hair like that. Maybe she lived up in the room behind the little window-box where the Overseer always stood.

"I'm Cynthia," the girl said, leaning forward like she wanted to tell him a secret. "But Colin says I'm _a-bloody-nuisance_."

He stared at her and put the knife down, prodding a finger through the hole he'd made in the box instead.

"Who's Colin?"

She smiled at him and picked up his knife like she owned it, flipping around to poke at the place the blade came out.

"He's a grown-up in the place we came here from," she said, frowning into the switch-blade. "He was real tall and he talked funny." She paused and leaned back on her hands, handing his knife to him. "He was kinda neat, though. He had a guard monster."

Butch made a face and snatched the knife back from her, shoving it into the pocket of his vault suit while trying to look like he didn't care.

"You're lying," he sneered. "I bet you're not new at all. I bet they just kept you down in the sewers because you're _crazy_."

The girl glared at him.

"I am _not_ crazy. Colin has a guard monster. I _met him_. His name is Gob and he's really nice." She shot a smug look in his direction before adding, "he gives me piggy-back rides."

"Piggy-back rides are for _babies_," he sneered, thinking about his dad and the way he'd looked like wax mannequin laying there in the box they'd put him in before they burned him up.

"Yeah? Well your _face_ is leaking." She laughed and stood up, poking him in the arm. "Pretty soon it'll fall off and you'll have to walk around without a mouth or a nose or _anything_."

"That's not true," he snapped, scrambling to his feet. "I got into a fight! It's different."

But the girl only laughed and made a face.

"Nuh-uh," she laughed, sticking out her tongue and wiggling fingers in front of her nose. "_You_ got bit by a radroach and it _sucked_ _out_ all your insides. Now your face is going to melt off and _you're_ going to turn into a radroach!"

"That's stupid! People can't turn into radroaches! Don't you know anything?"

He crossed his arms to look tough and stared down at her just like his mother always did just before she said, "_Jesus, Butch. Why can't you just _grow up_?" _But the girl only giggled again and pointed at his hair.

"You're already growing _feelers_," she said and launched down the hall, calling back over her shoulder, "Can't catch me, Radroach!"

Butch forgot his bloody nose and his missing birthday and the injustice of life in general and tore off after her.

He was _not_ a radroach.


	3. Present

42. Present

Words: 1112

Author's Note: There are new people wandering around in the background because I refuse to believe there's only eight kids around the same age in that vault.

Summary: Butch learns never to fall asleep around crazy womenfolk... and then figures maybe crazy womenfolk aren't that bad.

—0—

"Susie Mack?"

"Present."

"Wally Mack?"

"Yeah?"

"Christine Kendall?"

"Here."

"Cynthia Barlow?"

"Yes."

"Butch Deloria?"

Brotch paused.

"No Butch today?"

"He's here," Cynthia piped up. "But I think he's dead."

Resisting the urge to mention what a wonderful day _that_ would be, Brotch looked up from the attendance sheet to find Butch face down on the desk, snoring away, Cynthia swiveled around in her seat to better poke at him.

Deep down in his heart of hearts, Brotch felt bad for the kid. His mother was a drunk, his father was dead and god only knew what he had to put up with at home. It was no wonder he was exhausted the day after ration coupons were passed out. Chances were he'd been up most of the night keeping idiot Ellen from hurting herself and that was a hell of a responsibility for a twelve year old.

Not that feeling sorry for the kid stopped him from reveling in the beautiful _silence_. Sure, the kid had a lot to deal with, but so did everyone else down here. Funny how he and his "Tunnel Snakes" were the only ones who couldn't go more than thirty seconds without opening their mouths.

"Why don't we just let him sleep awhile?" Brotch suggested, moving on down the attendance sheet. "Freddy Gomez?"

"Here."

"Paul Hannon?"

"Yeah."

"Susan Green?"

"Here."

"Jason Algorwitch?"

"Over here."

"Amata Almodovar?"

"Present!"

"Well, it looks like everyone's…" he stopped, put the attendance sheet down and slipped on his glasses. "Miss. Barlow—may I ask what you're doing to Mr. Deloria?"

Cynthia shot him a sideways glance that might _almost_ have passed for guilt to an untrained eye. Brotch knew better. He had dealt with a litany of children every day since he'd turned eighteen and at thirty-six he knew the look of sheer, pre-teen mischief when he saw it.

"I gave him a makeover," she answered, looking smug. "He looks better now."

Brotch nodded slowly, watching as Butch twitched in his sleep, his tiny new braids swaying with the motion.

"Those rubber bands are for your braces, Miss. Barlow," he managed at last—keeping himself from laughing only through sheer force of will. "Please refrain from inflicting them on other students."

"Yes, sir," she said and turned back in her seat, facing the board with a half stifled smirk still curling at her lips. "Won't happen again."

"Good," Brotch nodded and stood up from his desk, feeling like today was going to be a rare, wonderful day. "So now that that's out of the way, let's get started. Who can tell me the date the United Nations finally collapsed?"

*

Thirty minutes later and it was becoming increasingly difficult to look past Butch with a straight face. Worse, the boy twitched like a half dead radroach every few minutes his two little braids waggling like antenna in the breeze. Anyone else and it would have been another exasperating, childish prank, but Brotch couldn't help savoring the moment for all it was worth.

"Miss. Barlow," he said at last, looking her dead in the eyes to avoid looking at Butch. "Why don't you take Mr. Deloria home? If he's going to sleep through the entire class, he may as well sleep there."

*

"I can walk myself, you know," Butch muttered, hands shoved in his pockets around the two rubber bands he'd pulled from his hair. "Why don't you go back to class and leave me the hell alone?"

Cynthia only shrugged.

"I thought you might like to spend the day down in sick-bay. Dad'll let you stay if I ask him too."

"Yeah?" he stopped to stare at her through bloodshot eyes, trying to determine if this was some kind of joke. But she only stood there and stared back at him like she had all day and didn't care if he came with her one way or another.

"Yeah." She shrugged. "It's quiet down there. I don't know how you people can sleep upstairs. You can hear everything right through the walls."

Just like you could hear somebody crying and ranting and throwing bottles at the wall in the next room clear as day. But she didn't say that. She didn't even _hint_ at that. She wasn't offering because of his mom or because she felt sorry for him—she was offering because it was _quiet._

"Look, don't think you're doing me any favors, all right?" he said, running a hand through his hair and trying to get the pieces back where they'd been before she'd gone and braided them. "I might stay down there for a half hour tops—you know, give me an excuse tomorrow when Brotch pitches a fit—but don't think I'm gonna hang around or anything."

Cynthia grinned, looking like she'd won some kind of prize and turned towards the infirmary.

"Good. Just don't get your stink everywhere, okay? I don't want to have to air out my room."

Butch watched her half-skip down the hallway and frowned, thinking a whole lot of things at once with not one of them making much sense. Mack was going to give him hell tomorrow about _hanging out with a girl_, but he… he sorta liked her. She wasn't bad. It wasn't like he wanted to run off and _marry _her or anything… but if she turned out to be Tunnel Snake material or something like that, he wouldn't mind.

Not that Tunnel Snakes ran around with girls… or that Tunnel Snakes could be girls at all. Even if she could fight pretty good—hell, she'd given him a shiner once when they were ten. And she said she could shoot. Said she even had her own little shooting range in one of the _no-kids-allowed _access tunnels. Mack said it was bullshit, but he'd gone down by the reactor once with the excuse of looking for Stanley and he'd definitely heard _somebody_ firing off a gun.

It didn't really matter though, he decided at last. She was a girl—she couldn't be a Tunnel Snake and she definitely couldn't go tagging around after them… but she was still kinda nice to have around.

"Hey," he said at last, breaking the tenuous silence between them. "Thanks."

She smiled at him—the freckles on her nose crinkling—and unaccountably Butch felt his face heat up.

"You're welcome."

"Yeah, just don't… don't get used to it, or anything," he said, glancing at her out of the corner of his eye while trying not to look at her at all. "Tunnel Snakes don't usually hang out with girls."

"I know," she said with a grin, slipping inside the infirmary. "You're not that cool."

—0—


	4. Secret

34. Secret

Summary: Cynthia has a _secret_.

—0—

"I really hate those stupid Tunnel Snakes," Amata announced, dropping down into the ugly green couch James had kept for some strange reason"I don't know why my father doesn't just _do _something about them already."

Cynthia shrugged and dropped her books down on the table before stretching out on the floor. Her back cracked in a few places and she grinned, already feeling better.

"Mack's an asshole," she agreed. "The rest of them aren't bad though."

Amata pushed herself upright and frowned down at her, watching as Cynthia picked at fibers in the patchwork carpet.

"Are you kidding?" she asked, trying to figure out if this was another of her obscure jokes.

Cynthia only shrugged and rolled over.

"Paulie's nice if you get him away from Mack." She paused, twining a strand of hair around her finger. "And Butch is kinda sweet."

Amata laughed and leaned back.

"You're out of your mind."

"I dunno," she said, smiling as she stared up at the ceiling. "I think he's funny."

"Funny? He's such a _jerk_. How could you possibly find that _funny_?"

Cynthia sighed and shut her eyes. Amata never understood things like this. She still thought boys—especially Tunnel Snakes—were _icky. _Of course, then again they both knew that Amata's dad would be choosing her future husband for her, so it was probably understandable. She'd probably hate boys too if she knew her dad was going to pick out her boyfriend. Her dad was a man of many talents, but he had _horrible_ taste.

Take the couch for instance.

"He's not usually a jerk," she said at last. "Usually he's just teasing. You can tell when he means it."

"Are you on _his_ side?" Amata said, unconsciously mimicking the disapproving voice of her father without quite meaning to. "Cyn, he calls _you_ horrible things every day!"

"Like what? Lab Rat? Igor?" Cynthia snorted. "He's only playing."

"He's an _asshole_." Amata frowned and shifted to lay flat on the couch. "I can't believe you _like_ him."

Cynthia shrugged again and pillowed her head with a hand, absently picking stray threads from the carpet with the other. Butch _was_ funny. He could be a jerk sometimes, but usually he only said what he said to make somebody laugh. So maybe it was stupid and usually Mack's kind of humor, but sometimes some of his insults could get pretty creative.

And he was never _mean_ exactly. He didn't throw their books around or stick gum in their hair when they weren't looking. One time he'd ripped up little bits of paper to put in her hair, but that had only taken a good shake to get out. Poor Susie had had to take scissors to her hair. And Mrs. Mack had _not_ been happy about that.

"What are you thinking about?" Amata asked after awhile.

"Nothing."

"It didn't look like nothing. You were _smiling_."

"I always smile." She sighed and flopped an arm in the vague direction of the book bedecked table. "Think we should start history?"

"Don't change the subject," Amata giggled, sitting up. "That was a _different_ kind of smile. You weren't thinking about nothing. You were thinking about a _boy_."

Cynthia rolled her eyes.

"So? I'm allowed to think about boys. If you haven't noticed, that's the sort of thing girls _do_."

"So who were you thinking about?" And then, with a look of enthusiastic disgust, "not _Butch_ I hope."

"Yes, Butch," she snapped, rolling towards the table. "What's wrong with that? He's nice when he wants to be."

"_Gross!_" Amata squealed, falling from the couch in a fit of giggles.

"S'not gross," Cynthia laughed, beating her with the first book that came to hand. "He's _cute_."

"I bet he has all kind of diseases. I bet—" she wheezed, out of breath with laughing and trying to struggle upright. "I bet he _oozes._ And _you_ wanna _kiss_ him!"

Cynthia blushed and smacked Amata again.

"I never said that! I just said I was thinking about Butch. I could have been thinking about something totally different that that."

"Cynthia and Butch, sittin' in a tree, K-I-S—"

Cynthia blushed harder—the tips of her ears a flaming red.

"Knock it off, would you?"

"S-I-N-G. First come love, then comes—"

"You can't say a word about this to _anyone_, Amata. If my dad hears—"

"Marriage. Then comes Butchie with the baby carriage!"

Cynthia broke down giggling to at that, a hand clapped over her mouth.

"_Shhh_, would you! If my dad hears he'll go _ballistic_. You can't tell anyone."

Amata hiccupped and started laughing all over again.

"But it's so _perfect_! Imagine your babies!"

"No! Don't imagine my babies!" she laughed. "Don't imagine my anything!"

"Okay," Amata said, heaving great gulps of air. "Okay, I'll stop."

"And promise me you won't tell anyone," Cynthia said, looking serious despite the color in her face. "You've got to pinkie swear."

Amata held up a pinkie and started giggling again.

"I promise. I won't tell _anyone_ you think Butch has a cute butt."

Cynthia grinned, looking mischievous.

"And I won't tell anyone you think Freddie is _hot_."

"Freddie? Eww! Gross out! I do _not_!"

"You _do_!" she sang, scrambling away from the pillow Amata grabbed to throw at her head. "I saw you _staring_ at him yesterday. You're in _looove_."

"I am not in love!"

Behind them, the door to the living room opened and James strode in with a bemused look on his face.

"You're too young to be in love," he said, smiling as he stepped over Amata to retrieve the clipboard on the coffee table. "And you're not allowed to date until you're forty. That goes for you both."

Cynthia laughed and flung an arm over her face.

"_Dad!_"

"You'll understand when you're older. Now do your homework or something else equally horrible as punishment for being young," he told her, sticking out his tongue for emphasis before ducking back out of the room.

The girls watched him go from their heap on the floor, Cynthia heaving a dramatic, world-weary sigh despite the smile twitching at her lips.

"I _hate_ homework."


	5. Lonely

18. Lonely

Summary: It doesn't _mean_ anything—she just doesn't like seeing him look so damn lonely.

—0—

Cynthia peered around the corner with her BB gun strapped to her back. Seeing nobody, she checked her Pipboy's detection monitor to be sure and waited for the camera to swing around, counting the seconds off in her head. When the camera started to rotate away, she darted out, skidding to a halt just inside its blind spot, watching the motion sensor light on the camera's underside to see if she'd been spotted. The light stayed out and Cynthia grinned, waiting for it to turn back the way she'd come before darting down the rest of the corridor and swinging around into the blessedly camera free reactor room.

It was only then her Pipboy deemed fit to tell her the room was occupied.

Butch glanced up at her from where he was sitting on the floor and glared, returning his attention to carving something that looked suspiciously like a table leg.

"Can't a guy get any damn privacy?" he snapped. "Get outta here."

Cynthia shrugged and slung the BB gun down from her shoulder.

"This may come as a shock to you, Butch, but you don't own the vault."

He pursed his lips and looked up, ready to really let her have it, but stopped at the sight of the gun.

"Where'd you get that?"

Cynthia stopped halfway to the target-practice room door and turned back, noticing how the light caught on the swelling purple bruise under one eye.

"It was a present," she said at last. "My dad gave it to me a couple years ago."

Butch put his knife down for a moment, resting a leather clad arm on his leg.

"Overseer know you got that?"

Cynthia twitched, her knuckles going white around the barrel. For a second she felt like punching him. She wasn't entirely sure the gun was Overseer Approved—Dad tended to be purposely scatterbrained when it came to authority—and she didn't need anyone reminding the Overseer about it. It was _hers_. She wasn't hurting anyone. Hell, she wasn't even wasting supplies! Stanley made the BB pellets out of bits of scrap metal too small to use. But god forbid someone in this goddamned vault have any fun or the stupid Overseer would swoop down from his little window and—

"Hey, relax," Butch said, breaking through her thoughts. "I'm not gonna tell him or nothing. Hell, it'd serve the bastard right if you tore up the vault. Not everything has to be so damned _perfect_."

Cynthia blinked at the venom in his voice, her anger fading. She'd seen a few of Butch's bad days before—one time Brotch had almost physically thrown him from the room—but she'd never seen him look so… dejected. He looked about a million years old sitting there by the reactor with his black eye and bad attitude. Like the whole world was out to get him and he'd been putting up with it as long as he'd been around.

"You okay?" she asked at last. "You get into a fight or something?"

Butch glared and turned away, carving a vicious notch into his table leg.

"Or something," he snapped.

An uncomfortable silence descended on the room, broken only by the hum and hiccup of the nearby machinery. Cynthia stood there, shifting from foot to foot as Butch hacked great chunks out of the wood, feeling suddenly claustrophobic and wishing he'd come with her.

Her father didn't like Butch. Or rather, didn't _trust_ him. He didn't like the idea of her being anywhere near him. The fact that their seats were so close—alphabetical order and all that—bothered him every time he thought of it. He'd even gone and talked to Brotch about it the once, but the class was so small, the only place Butch wouldn't get into trouble was directly behind her. He would _not_ be happy to hear she'd let Butch come target practicing with her—much less that she'd shown him the target practice ring at all—but he just looked so damn _sad_.

"Hey," she said at last. "You wanna come shoot with me? We can take turns."

Butch looked up, searching her face before a twitch of a smile pulled at the corner of his mouth.

"Yeah? For real?"

Cynthia shrugged and hoped her face wasn't as red as it felt.

"Sure. Just promise me you won't tell anybody. If my dad finds out I took you shooting, he'll _freak_."

Butch laughed and folded his knife, shoving it into his pocket as he pushed up from the ground.

"You got yourself a deal."

She cocked an eyebrow at him, watching as he sauntered closer, table leg in hand.

"You can't tell your Tunnel Snakes either, Butch. You know Mack would go running to the Overseer first chance he got."

"Hey," Butch told her, grinning. "The less I say, the more for us, right? I won't tell a soul."

Cynthia tried to stand firm and give him the disapproving look Amata was so good at—tried to do anything but _melt_ at that smile and the fact that it was _just for her—_but failed miserably. Instead she grinned back at him and handed him the gun, digging for the key in her bag.

"Jonas set it up," she told him as she unlocked the door, watching through the corner of his eye as he pulled parts out and slipping them back into the gun with almost practiced ease. "It's back in one of the empty storage closets so no one ever comes this way. Stanley's the only one with a key, but that's okay because he makes me ammo."

"Sounds good to me," Butch said, punching her in the arm ever so lightly with a conspiratorial smile as they slipped inside. "I just wanna shoot something."


	6. Parents

37. Parents

Author's Note: Much swearing. I'm earning that T rating today.

Summary: He doesn't need any parents. And neither does Cynthia… she just doesn't know it yet.

—0—

Butch made his way down the hallway towards Cynthia's apartment, thinking maybe they could go shooting or something and hoping Amata was off playing Vault Princess somewhere else. It seemed like every time he showed up at Cynthia's place, there she was making those stupid cow faces of hers and saying things like, _"I don't know, Cyndie—what if your dad finds out?" _and "_I'm not saying you shouldn't hang out, I'm just saying you should think about it first."_

And yeah, maybe he didn't get the best grades, but he wasn't an idiot. He knew what she meant even if she didn't say it. She thought he was just some idiot punk with a bad attitude and that he wasn't _good enough for dear Cynthia_. Hell though, it wasn't even like they were dating or anything. She was just fun. She had a gun and a shooting range and she didn't care if he cracked bad jokes or swore or said the wrong thing at the wrong time. She cracked bad jokes too—and swore and spit and laughed at the stupid shit he said and that was all right. Didn't mean he was a bad influence or whatever.

Butch hunched his shoulders a little against the chill of the corridors and turned down the hall into the doctor's living quarters but stopped at the sound of raised voices.

"You're being unreasonable!"

"Cynthia—"

"_No, _Dad! You don't get it! You're not listening!"

"Believe it or not, Cynthia, I was young once too. And I can promise you he's only thinking about one thing right now and it's _not_ the future."

"Butch isn't _like_ that! And anyway, why does everything have to have a _future? _Why can't I just hang out with my friends?"

James sighed.

"That's just it, sweetheart. He's _not _your friend. Why don't you go visit Amata? She's got your best interests at heart."

Butch clenched his fists, blood pounding in his ears. Amata did _not_ have her best fucking interests at heart. She didn't listen to a damn thing Cynthia said. Her world revolved around staying _Daddy's little princess_ and finding ways for that son of a bitch to make his life more goddamn difficult.

"And Butch doesn't?" Cynthia snapped. "What, you think just because he hangs out with a bunch of testosterone driven idiots he'll punch me out one of these days?"

"No, sweetheart," James walked past the door with a long suffering sigh and Butch sulked backwards into the shadows in case he came out. "If you'd stop and think about this for a moment, you'd see I'm not being unreasonable."

"No, I'd think you were judging him by his mother."

"Ellen has nothing to do with my opinion of him, Cyndie, and you know it. And yes, perhaps it is her fault in hindsight, but the boy has no _morals."_

"What? Because he teases Amata?"

"He teases you too, honey."

"So? It's just for fun."

Butch listened and something heavy fell onto the couch—probably Cynthia—and wished she'd just come out. He still wanted to see her. Wanted to go shooting so he didn't haul off and punch Mack in the jaw just to shut him up.

"Amata told me he called you a 'hunchbacked slave girl' today," James said so gently the words barely made it through the walls. But he heard Cynthia's snort clearly enough.

"He was _joking_, Dad."

"That doesn't sound like a joke to me."

"Normally he calls me Igor. You're the mad scientist, so I'm Igor. Get it? It's not an _insult_. I don't know why everybody just assumes when he opens his mouth, it's gotta be an insult. Sometimes he's just being funny."

Butch _hated_ hearing people talking about him. They'd been doing it his whole goddamned life—like he was some kind of fucking soap opera or something. First it had been things like _poor kid, losing his dad so young. _But that had turned into _I don't think Ellen is feeding that boy of hers enough _and _did you see he had another black eye today? No one runs into that many doors._ And then he'd figured if they were going to talk about him, they may as well talk about something he'd done for his own goddamned self. So he started the Tunnel Snakes and caused some trouble and no one had given a flying shit about him one way or another until he went and called the fucking Vault Princess' friend _Igor._ And now all of a sudden he was a bad influence and a _ruffian_ and they probably wouldn't be allowed to hang out again until they were old and decrepit and where was the fucking justice in _that?_

"Cynthia, I'm not trying to ruin your life," he heard, filtering through the wall. "I'm just trying to _help_ you. And I don't think you should see Butch anymore."

"Fuck you too, buddy," Butch muttered and pulled a pack of cigarettes from the pocket of his coat. "I'm outta here."

Fumbling for his lighter Butch turned back the way he'd come. He didn't want to hear any more. So he was a lousy kid. So his mother was a drunk. Big deal. It wasn't like he was some crazy axe murderer or something. Hell, if there was a guy in the vault James needed to be worried about it was _Mack_.

A door opened behind him just as he turned the corner and he stopped, listening as Cynthia—it had to be Cynthia—ran down the hall.

"Hey!" he called, catching her around the waist before she could fly past him. "Where you off too?"

She turned and looked up at him and Butch found himself at a sudden and total loss as to what to do. She was _crying_. Pissed as all hell and ready to beat the shit out of anything in her path, but crying just the same.

"You heard all that, didn't you?" she asked him, her voice thick. "I don't know what the hell happened. I mean, I knew he didn't like you, but _Jesus,_ does he have to be such a _prick_ about it?"

"Hey, it's all right, babe." He smiled and tried to laugh for her sake. "I've heard worse."

But Cynthia only shook her head, tearing a hand through her hair in frustration.

"But from _him. _How in the hell does he think he can just play god with my life? Does he _honestly_ believe that telling me not to see you will change everything? This is a fucking _vault_, for godssake. How in the hell does he think I just _won't see you_?"

Butch didn't have an idea in hell how to fix this, but he figured a hug was as good a place to start as any. He tugged her close with the hand still on her waist, pulling his jacket around her as she tucked her head under his chin.

"It'll be okay," he told her for lack of anything better to say, liking the way she fit in his arms. "What're they gonna do? Kick me out?"


	7. Hide

9. Hide

Summary: Butch finds a place of his own and a person to share it with.

—0—

Butch was so goddamned tired of this shit. It was one of those—whatchacallits—endless cycle things Brotch talked about. Every goddamned month she spent half the fucking coupons on vodka and beer and Butch was _sick_ of peeling her up off the floor. He needed a place of his own and he needed it _now_—Overseer or no fucking Overseer. There was no way in hell he was sleeping in that shit hole any more. He was too goddamned tired of waking up to broken glass first thing in the morning.

Ducking into the shadows with his back against the wall, Butch glanced down at his Pip-boy. A few green dots were meandering around the common room, a few more scattered through the apartments. The blue dot he'd set to track Cynthia's Pip-boy showed her still sleeping—sprawled out in the middle of her room.

Butch frowned and let his arm fall. It wasn't like he needed her help or anything. He didn't need anyone. He'd find the coolest damn hide-out anyone had ever seen and it'd be all his. No worries, no nothing. Just him and a bottle of whisky and a big-ass apartment all to himself.

Except he knew it wouldn't be any kind of hide-out without Cynthia there to paint faces on the walls and crack bad jokes about his taste in mattresses, so he'd just have to go back and get her as soon as he found a really good one. Or—better yet—as soon as he got it all set up. She thought she was just the best damn thing ever with her secret shooting range—and hell, so maybe she _was_—but he'd have his own _place_ with a fridge and a bed and all kinds of shit. Maybe he'd even rig up something for them to listen to her mom's old records on. And they could just hang out—no parents, no rules, no worrying about Stanley dropping in at the wrong time, no nothing.

It'd be _perfect_.

Easing around the corner to watch the camera, Butch waited for it to turn away before sprinting down the hall towards the restricted hallway. The camera was one of the old creaky ones and the door was at a sort of angle, so he had exactly thirty two seconds to pick the lock on the door before he'd be spotted. He'd been practicing on the door into the shooting range for almost a week now and he'd gotten his time down to eighteen seconds—enough time to pick the lock and have the door closed before the camera swung around.

But just in case, Butch slipped a piece of wadded up gum into the camera's gears as he darted past. It wouldn't stop the camera from moving—he didn't want to catch the Overseer's attention—but it would slow the damn thing down some.

Screwdriver already in hand, he grabbed a handful of his mother's bobby pins from his pocket and set to work on the door. Broke one as soon as it hit the lock his hands were shaking so bad. Shoved the broken halves back into his pocket and tried again, hearing the camera click on its hinges as the gum caught in the gears.

"_Shit," _he hissed to himself, wedging the screwdriver farther into the lock as the second pin broke. The camera had finally reached the end of its rotation, the clicking pausing for a minute as it took a long shot of the hall before it started to turn.

Butch shoved another pin into the lock, torqued it, pulled the screwdriver _just so_ and _flew_ inside as the door ground open.

And then he stayed plastered against an inside wall for a good three minutes after, breathing hard and listening as outside the camera clicked towards where he'd been the moment before and counting the broken pins in his pocket. The Overseer couldn't be looking at all of the cameras all of the time, but he was enough of an asshole to notice something like half a bobby pin five feet away on a grainy camera image.

_He'd done it_, he realized when the adrenaline faded. _He'd fucking done it_. Butch grinned and pumped a fist in the air, suppressing a whoop of sheer _triumph_. They didn't think he was smart enough to pull something like this off. _Nobody_ could beat the Overseer's damn cameras and even if there _was_ somebody, it certainly wasn't Butch Deloria. But he'd showed them. He'd gone and gotten in a section of the vault that nobody had seen for probably fifty years and it was _all fucking his._

Cynthia was gonna be so excited.

Still grinning, Butch strode down the hallway like the king of everything, looking into the doors as he passed. There was a bathroom with toilets that still worked when he turned the water on. Probably a shower too, but he knew better than to risk that. Stanley knew where every toilet flushed and exactly how much water each used. He'd know where they were and he'd make up a good excuse for the extra water filtration so nobody went looking but there was no way he could cover up a whole shower's worth of water.

Most of the rooms he found were pretty much empty. There was no reason to waste perfectly good supplies, after all. But he found a computer in one room that looked like it might work again with a few parts and fan that worked just fine if you didn't mind the bent blade. In what had probably been some kid's room, he found a bed with a metal frame that had broken through the middle, punching holes through the mattress.

He took it with him, dragging it down the hallway as he peered inside room after room, looking for another one. He was in the last room when he finally found it—an adult sized mattress leaned up against the wall on a pile of shit with one corner burned off.

Butch struggled out of the room with it and leaned it and the kid's mattress up against the wall, throwing his jacket over one of them before peeling off the top half of his jumpsuit. It was _hot_ back here. They must have turned the air filtration off or something to _save resources_ like the Overseer was always going on about.

_Well_, _fuck them, _Butch decided with a grin, checking his Pip-boy again. He knew he should probably turn it off—keep people from tracking him down—but he wanted to see if Cynthia was up.

Not yet. And judging by the time he had another hour or so before she even started twitching. _Perfect_. By the time she woke up, he'd have this place so fucking awesome she'd want to _marry_ him.

*

Cynthia blinked, peering out at the hallucination from under her nice warm pile of blankets. She'd been having a wonderful dream. It hadn't made a whole hell of a lot of sense, but then, most of her dreams didn't. One time she'd even had a dream about Amata turning into Grognak the Barbarian and breaking out of the vault. That dream, however, made slightly more sense to her now than this one.

"Well, you gonna get up or not?" Hallucination-Butch prodded her, dirty faced and grinning. "I gotta show you something."

Cynthia blinked again, staring at him and trying to align what she knew of Butch with this hallucination.

Butch was not a complete idiot. He knew her dad didn't like him the least little bit. He also knew that should her dad happen to stop by to find Butch hovering over his scantily clad daughter's bed that there would be serious hell to pay, the majority of which would be painful, in secret and without the Overseer's consent.

And yet here he was, standing in the middle of her room with dirt streaked across his face and arms, half dressed and grinning like an idiot. Stuff of dreams, yes. Under normal circumstances, Cynthia would have been quite happy to stare at him all day. But normal circumstances would have put her father on the whole other side of the vault and her in more than a thin, faded t-shirt with a tendency to ride up.

"Are you crazy?" she managed, her sleep soggy brain still a little slow firing up the speech centers. "What time is it?"

"Almost _noon_, Lab Rat. Com'on. You wanna see it or not?"

"S'not almost _noon_, you liar. If it was almost noon, I'd be hungry." She glared at him, or would have had her eyes not closed on her. "Fuck off."

For a moment there was silence.

There was also a breeze.

Cynthia groped for her blanket without opening her eyes and found only Butch's knee where he balanced on the edge of the bed.

"Come _on_, would you?" he said and his voice sounded a little… thicker than usual. "You'll love it."

Cynthia opened her eyes to find him _staring_ down at her and blushed, shoving him off the bed with as much force as she could manage first thing in the morning.

"Go find me breakfast, you pervert," she laughed. "I'm going to get dressed. And if dad comes home and asks you what you're doing to his daughter—run away."

Butch stopped halfway to the door and turned.

"Tunnel Snakes never _run_."

"_Out_, Butch!"

He laughed and winked at her, opening the door.

"Whatever you say, baby."

*

The look on her face was just like he imagined it. Butch grinned, watching her stare at the room in _total awe_, taking it all in. The mattresses weren't the same height, but he thought he'd done a pretty good job covering that up with a few strategic pillows and a pile of sheets. The desk on the far wall looked pretty good too. The top was barely even dented at all and the computer covered the worst of the scarring.

"It's not really _done_ yet, you know," he told her. "I thought I'd rig up something to play your mom's old records on, you know? Maybe even some shelves for our shit."

Cynthia blinked.

"This is… ours?"

"Well, yeah." He grinned a little wider, resisting the urge to squirm like a kid in the spotlight. "You let me come shooting with you, so I figure it's okay if you hang out here. If you want to, I mean. Just don't tell anyone."

"You gonna bring your Tunnel Snakes here?"

"Naw." He shrugged, still grinning. "You know Mack can't keep his big mouth shut. Why ruin a good thing?"

And suddenly she was staring at him like he was the best goddamned thing she'd ever seen and Butch knew his ears were bright red. Nobody'd ever _looked_ at him like that before—like he was the only thing in the whole world worth a damn.

"You, Butch," she told him, "are a fucking _saint_."

He turned to her, meaning to say something clever and charming but the words died on his lips at the look in her eyes. And when she leaned in he was ready for it, pulling her closer with one hand on her hip and the other in her hair. And they were kissing—honest to god _kissing—_lips and tongues and teeth in all the wrong places, but it was _her _and it was _him_. And everything in the world felt like it had been leading up to this point and Butch realized somewhere between the first kiss and the third that he had never been happier.


	8. Notice

27. Notice

Summary: Amata begins to take notice of the world around her and doesn't quite like what she sees.

—0—

Amata walked down the hallway towards Cynthia's apartment with a load of books under one arm and the beginning of an apocalyptic headache. It figured. Cynthia usually had the worst timing in the world when it came to almost-failing one subject or another. And _history_ too. God, it had to be the easiest thing in the world to remember. It was like one big story. But somehow Cyndie always managed to mix up all the important people and _dates_—dates eluded her completely. Mr. Brotch had actually _laughed_ at her last history essay. Apparently she'd given up trying to describe the Great War and had instead written an essay about President _Grognak's_ State of the Union address in _1909_.

Amata wasn't going to let her fail this time though. This time she had an idiot-proof study guide. So long as she could actually get Cynthia to _read it _instead of running off wherever it was she went to hide, she might actually pass the year.

"I can't. Not tonight," she heard Cynthia telling someone in the next corridor. "Amata's coming down. I have to study."

"Study? Why the hell you wanna do _that_ for?"

Amata stopped dead in the middle of the hall. That sounded like Butch she was talking to. But her dad had forbidden her from seeing him _weeks_ ago and so far as she knew, Cynthia had stayed away...

"Because I'm failing," she laughed. "Look, you can go by yourself. I don't care."

"But it's no fun without _you_, baby," Butch practically purred, his voice lower than she'd ever heard it and Amata figured if there was ever time for an intervention, it was now.

"Hey, Cyndie!" she called, bounding around the corner. "You ready?"

She watched as Butch jerked away from where he'd been leaning—his face only millimeters away from Cynthia's—and shoved his hands in his pockets, the tips of his ears going red.

"What the hell're _you_ looking at?" he snapped.

Amata opened her mouth to answer just as Cynthia turned and punched him in the arm.

"Jesus, Butch," she growled. "Why d'you gotta be like that?"

He glared back at her and shrugged.

"Hey, whatever," he muttered, pulling a beat up pack of cigarettes from his pocket. "Have fun _studying_, Poindexter. _I'm_ gonna go have some _real_ fun."

Amata frowned as he brushed past her in a cloud of smoke, watching to make sure he was safely around the corner before turning to Cynthia with a questioning look. But the girl only shook her head and turned to walk inside, her lips pressed into a thin, bloodless line. Amata sighed and followed her, her temples throbbing in time to the echo of Cynthia's footsteps.

There was a time and a place for well-meaning lectures, but today was most certainly _not it_.

*

"So…" Amata started a few days later as they lay sprawled on the floor of Cynthia's room, avoiding anything that so much as _looked_ like schoolwork. "What's up with you and Butch?"

Cynthia shrugged and closed her eyes.

"I don't know. I guess we're friends."

Amata laughed.

"I didn't think Butch _had_ friends."

But Cynthia didn't even smile. She just lay there staring at the ceiling and Amata realized this was a hell of a lot more serious than she'd thought.

"You okay?" she asked quietly. "He didn't hit you or anything, did he?"

"I'd beat the shit out of him if he did." Cynthia snorted and brightened slightly, rolling over to face her. "It'd be like my tenth birthday party all over again. You remember that?"

Amata smiled, leaning back against the bed.

"I remember you broke his nose and he had to walk around with that splint-thing on his face for ages. Did he ever forgive you for that?"

"Heh... he was never really angry in the first place. He was just trying to be cool for his stupid friends."

Amata waited for Cynthia to say more but she didn't—just lay there staring up at the ceiling like it held all the answers in the world.

"What was up with you and him the other day?" Amata asked at last, curiosity getting the best of her.

Cynthia only shrugged.

"He wanted to hang out and he got pissed off when I said I was busy."

_He was about to _kiss_ you, _Amata wanted to say. _He was mad because I interrupted him. _But she could see there was something huge Cynthia wasn't telling her and that whatever the reason was, it was a whopper.

"Are you dating?" she asked at last, figuring it was best just to get the question out in the open.

"Are you kidding?" Cynthia snorted. "Butch doesn't date. He's too _cool_ for that."

And suddenly Amata realized _that_ was why Cynthia had been so distracted lately. _Butch didn't date_. He smoked and swore and hung out with his gang and had that weird on-again-off-again thing with Christine, but nobody ever caught his attention for very long.

Suddenly Amata felt a hell of a lot better. Yeah, it sucked that her best friend was head over heels for an idiot. And yeah, she'd been head over heels for the same idiot just about as long as she could remember, but at least nothing had _come_ from it. Maybe in a couple of years Butch would grow up and into a decent human being, but right now, Cynthia deserved _way _better. She just didn't know it yet.

"Hey," Amata said suddenly, reaching for her bag. "Let me give you a makeover."

"No!" Cynthia laughed, breaking out of her funk as she scrambled up and onto the bed. "Stay away from me!"

"But I'll make you _pretty_," she wheedled, dumping out the contents of her bag with a wicked grin.

Cynthia grabbed a pillow to fend her off, still laughing.

"You'll make me a _clown_, more like. Remember last time you put make-up on me? I looked like a freak show!"

"No," Amata sniggered, grabbing the mirror off the dresser. "You looked like Christine. There's a slight difference."


	9. Friends

10. Friends

Summary: Cynthia doesn't know what they are, but she's not sure they're friends anymore.

—0—

Cynthia stared at the ceiling, trying not to think about anything and failing miserably. The question Amata had asked her the other day just kept popping back into her head. She'd be thinking about something totally different and—

_Butch watched her as she lined up the shot, his eyes roaming her body from shoulder to hip, hands twitching at his side. Cynthia fired, grinning as the bullet hit dead center and turned to say something clever. But before she could even think, Butch had her pressed up against the wall, his mouth moving hot and demanding against hers until her world had narrowed to heat and hands and _him_ and there were too many goddamned clothes between them but—_

—there it'd be, staring her in the face, waiting for an answer.

_Are you dating?_

They weren't really. Or at least she was pretty sure they weren't. Butch had that weird thing with Christine going on and it wasn't like they'd slept together or anything. They just hung out every now and then. Just to get away from everybody else. Butch was pretty okay when it was just the two of them. But that didn't mean she wanted it to be just the two of them all the time or anything. She wasn't about to marry _anyone_ let alone—

_Butch uncovered her eyes, managing to look both smug and shy at the same time, grease staining his t-shirt in streaks._

_"What is it?" Cynthia asked, looking between him and the pile of gears and wondering if the latter would eat her._

_"It's a record player." Butch grinned, rocking back on his heels, the tips of his ears turning red. "I didn't have anything better to do and there were some old parts laying around. Figured you could listen to some of your mom's old records down here."_

_Words failed her. For a long moment Cynthia just stood there, thinking about how long it must have taken to find those pieces just _laying around_ and about the fact that Butch had gone to all that trouble for _her. _Not Christine. Not Jennie. Her. But she couldn't for the life of her figure out what to say._

_So she kissed him. Hard._

_And suddenly she could see the flush spreading onto his grease-smeared cheeks, but his hand was tangled in her hair, calloused fingers tracing patterns on her jaw and—_

—do something stupid like that with _Butch_. Hell, they weren't either of them the marrying type anyway. Not that they were even old enough to think about marriage. And not that even if they _were_ they'd have a choice in the matter. The Overseer would probably find a way to pair everyone up just the way he liked and god knew putting the two of them together was like begging for the vault to explode.

Though Cynthia couldn't help thinking that if she _had_ to marry someone in the vault, it would probably be Butch. Freddie was sweet but a real idiot and she couldn't imagine pairing off with somebody like Paul Hannon or Ricky Torrick. Come to think of it, Butch was one of the few people in the vault she could even stand to hang around for any period of time.

Not that it _meant_ anything. They were just—

_Three minutes until class and Cynthia found herself pinned against the wall with one hand running up under the back of Butch's jacket and the other keeping his mouth firmly locked on hers. He was grinning against her lips, his hands everywhere at once and somewhere along the line the top of her suit had come off. But then Brotch rang that damn bell of his and suddenly it was a scramble to get their clothing back in order. _

_"Son of a _bitch_," Butch muttered, realizing his hair was sticking up in ten different directions and there was no way he was going to fix it in time. _

_Cynthia laughed, hearing Brotch's footsteps echoing down the hall and planted a kiss in the corner of his mouth before running off. Butch watched her go with a smile tugging at his lips and muttered something thoroughly—_

—friends.

Except she wasn't so sure they _were _friends anymore. Everything was getting so damn complicated. And lately, they couldn't even _look_ at each other. She tried to say hello and all she could think about was the way he'd felt against her and she knew Butch was no better. His ears went red at the _sight_ of her and every time he so much as glanced in her direction he started doing that weird twitchy thing with his hands.

Cynthia sighed and rolled out of bed, creeping over to the wall to listen for her father's snoring. He was safely tucked away in his own room, minding his own business and not about to come bother her just as she slipped out.

Good.

She needed to see Butch.

*

Halfway to the hideout and Cynthia _really_ wished she'd brought her Pip-boy. If anyone was up and about, they'd be able to see her on the tracking system, but at least she'd be able to see _them_. As it was she had to stop and listen every few seconds, _positive_ she'd heard footsteps a few halls down. Dodging the cameras was bad enough without having to worry about some asshole catching her out breaking curfew. She could already hear her dad's world famous _Maturity and Responsibility _lecture ringing in her ears and she was getting _really_ tired of—

Cynthia yelped as she rounded the corner and collided nose-first into something distinctly male and scrambled backwards like her life depended on it.

"What in the hell are you doing?" a voice hissed through the dark and Cynthia could have laughed had her heart not been going a mile a minute.

"Coming to see _you_, you asshole," she whispered back. "Some thanks I get. You almost gave me a heart attack."

"I almost gave _you_ a heart attack? I wasn't the one jumping around corners at people."

Cynthia giggled, imagining the look on Butch's face. Despite his big and bad routine, she could hear the tremor of adrenaline in his voice.

"Come on," she said, finding his hand in the dark. "Let's go hide."

*

Butch hadn't yet found a way to rig overhead lights into the hideout. The only light they had was the blue glow of the few still functioning work-man lights built into the walls and the flickering computer screen. Normally the lack of lighting irritated her, but for the moment Cynthia was grateful for it.

When she'd left her room, she'd known exactly what she wanted to say. She'd thought it was going to be easy. The script was _right there_, after all. All she had to do was just _ask him_ what they… were exactly, and then everything would fall into place. Or rather, she'd fall into his arms. And yeah, it hadn't exactly been a realistic image or anything, but she'd at least thought she'd be able to _talk._

But no. Here they were, standing in the half dark room, blushing like idiots and avoiding looking each other in the eyes.

"So…" Cynthia managed at last. "Why were you coming up?"

"Couldn't sleep. Figured maybe you were up." Butch glanced up, meeting her eyes for a split second. "Guess I was right, huh?"

"I was thinking." Cynthia closed her eyes, hating the sound of her own voice. "See, the other day Amata asked if we were... you know, dating or anything…"

Butch was quiet for a long moment, just staring at her. And Cynthia wasn't really sure, but she could almost see his hands twitching through the dark.

"What'd you tell her?" he asked at last.

She shrugged and resisted the urge to fiddle with the hem of her sleeve.

"I didn't know. Are we?" Cynthia glanced up. "I mean, I know we're _friends_, but…" she trailed off, realizing Butch was a hell of a lot closer than he had been a moment ago. And when their lips met, it was nothing like the rushed and stolen kisses they'd had before. It was slow and sweet and perfect and it told her everything she needed to know without saying anything at all.

"Yeah, I guess we're dating," he told her when they parted, his voice a bit deeper than normal. "I mean, you are my best girl an' all."

Cynthia grinned.

"Yeah?"

"Well…" Butch shrugged, a mischievous glint in his eyes. "You'll do."


	10. Others

17. Others

Author's Note: For Miriamel. Because I hadn't actually thought about that, but it makes a lot of sense in the scheme of things. And if anyone else has any good ideas, feel free to share. I've only got a vague three part plan for this fic and 50 prompts in which to expand on it.

Story Note: Turpentine eats paint and sticky stuff. So you know.

Summary: Stupid Christine. What the hell does Butch see in her anyway?

—0—

Cynthia was not the jealous type. She was clever. Logical. She knew that there was no way she and Butch could hang out together in public. Even if they didn't look like they were dating—and they _were_, she thought with vicious pride—someone would figure it out and it would get back to her dad and she'd have one hell of a mess on her hands.

She also knew that were Butch to suddenly stop getting caught making out with Christine in random corridors, people would start asking questions because Butch was _not_ that kind of guy. And even if they didn't ask the _right_ questions, her dad would figure it out because _he _was that kind of guy.

That being said, Cynthia was _not frigging happy_ about the situation.

It wasn't the Butch and Christine thing. After all, there'd always been a Butch and Christine thing. There'd been a Butch and Christine thing since Butch had punched Tommy Goren out for making fun of her.

Except for, you know, the fact that he _hadn't_.

In reality, Butch had punched Tommy Goren for stealing his switchblade and last pack of cigarettes and it had just happened to coincide with one of Goren's horrible attempts at flirtation. Not that Butch had the slightest intention of clearing _that_ little misunderstanding up.

Cynthia took a deep, calming breath, hiding her clenched fists under the diner table as she sat staring at the math homework in front of her and struggled against the urge to _strangle that ugly fat cow with her own hideous scarf._

"Jeeze, Cyndie," Amata laughed, looking up from her soda. "I know you hate math, but I'm pretty sure glaring at it like that won't set it on fire."

"It's not," she managed between clenched teeth, "the math."

Amata blinked and was about to ask what exactly _was_ the problem just as Christine let out a trilling laugh from where she sat perched on Butch's lap with a perfectly manicured hand twined around his neck.

"Oh," she said at last. "That."

Cynthia met her eyes with a manic, deadly looking smile.

"Yes," she agreed. "_That_."

Amata was silent a long moment, only watching as Christine slipped a hand under Butch's jacket and ran her fingers down his back. And then, suddenly, she smiled.

"I have a plan."

*

There were times when Cynthia despaired that Amata would ever really understand her and that they may as well communicate through smiley-faced sticky notes as talk.

This was not one of those times.

In fact, this was one of those times in which Amata proved herself a brilliant, wonderful friend capable of magnificent feats of sheer amazingness the likes of which the world had never seen. It just so happened that not only was Amata in possession of a large number of apartment key copies her dad kept around _just in case_ but that she also happened to own a large bottle of Wonderglue perfect for slipping into shampoo bottles belonging to a certain detested individual.

Cynthia stifled a giggle from her look-out position as Amata filled Christine's Extra Bounce shampoo bottle with Wonderglue.

Today, she decided, was a very good day.

*

Today, Cynthia decided the next morning as Christine flounced into class with a short, _sexy_ new haircut, was _not_ a good day.

Butch had _fixed_ her hair.

She knew it was Butch. Didn't even have to look at him to know he'd done it because the stink of the turpentine he'd used to get the glue out of her hair had stuck to his skin and she could smell it every time he shifted in his seat behind her.

_Ass_. That's all he was. A giant stinking _ass_. Well, if he wanted to spend all his time with Christine, fine. He could just go ahead and do that. And he could go ahead and give Cynthia back her key to the shooting range too because there was no way she was going to let him take _her_ in there. Hell, he'd probably even want to show her the hideout. But he could just go ahead and do that for all she cared because then Christine would run off and tell the Overseer and Butch could kiss his privacy goodbye. It'd serve him right.

Cynthia slunk down in her seat, ignoring everyone around her in favor of doodling ugly fat Christines in the margins of her English book. She didn't know what Butch saw in that girl anyway. She had _bird legs_, for godssake, and it wasn't as if she had a shape to speak of. And not that she was naïve enough to think Butch cared about what she had to say more than how fast she could get her clothes off, but the girl's voice could strip _paint_.

She glowered as Christine started to brag about her new haircut from the other side of the room, scribbling a beard onto her latest doodle with force enough to rip the page.

And then suddenly she had a brilliant idea.

And that brilliant idea was named Freddie.


	11. Lovers

11. Lovers

Author's Note: This is still part of the story arc for Miriamel's idea. And major kudos to those that get the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy reference.

Summary: Stupid Freddie. What the hell does Cynthia see in him anyway?

—0—

Butch was not the jealous type. He was far too cool for that. And even if he _wasn't, _he wasn't an idiot at least. He knew Cynthia had to hang out with some other guy _eventually. _It wasn't like she could follow him around or anything. Hell, her dad would probably know about it before it even happened and it was _not_ a good idea to piss off the guy with all the scalpels. So yeah, in theory it was pretty smart that Cynthia went and got herself some guy to hang on.

But that didn't mean he had to like it.

And it wasn't the whole some-other-guy-with-his-best-girl thing either. They weren't _married_ or anything. He was totally cool with the idea of her and some other guy. Hell, some other _girl_ if that's the sort of thing she was into. He didn't care if she went around screwing everything in the vault with _legs—_it wasn't exactly a secret Christine put out, after all.

But did it have to be _Gomez_?

Not that Freddie Gomez was a _threat_ or anything. The guy looked like a sick radroach most days and it wasn't like he had any muscle to speak of. He was skinny as a rail—probably couldn't even pick Cynthia up if he wanted to. And not that Butch thought of himself as a pretty boy or anything, but Freddie looked kind of like the week-old sandwiches he sometimes found under the couch at home.

At the other end of the diner, Cynthia burst out laughing and Butch jerked Christine a little closer to him at the sound. It wasn't like it bothered him or anything that she was over there laughing her ass off with frigging _Gomez. _It was just that she had _the_ most annoying laugh on the face of the planet when she really got going. And she was really going now. Whatever it was Gomez had said was just frigging _hysterical._

"That is _so_ obnoxious," Christine sighed, resting her head on his shoulder. "Why can't they go somewhere else and be idiots?"

But Butch was fixated on the sound, trying not to look at her as on the other side of the room she started hiccupping. She only ever laughed at _his_ jokes like that. And he sort of wanted to think that maybe she was only doing it to get his attention, but she was just about _crying_ over there and there was no way you could fake a laugh like that. Whatever it was stupid Gomez had told her, she was _gone_.

"Yeah," Butch muttered, turning back to the milkshake he and Christine were supposed to be sharing. "Kinda wonder what he said though."

Christine snorted.

"Probably something stupid. Freddie's sweet, but not real bright, you know?" she smiled then and laughed her trilling little giggle. "I suppose they do make a cute couple though."

They goddamned fucking well did _not_ make a _cute couple_, Butch thought, clenching his jaw so hard it hurt. Cynthia was _his_ _girl_. Her and Gomez were just one of those meantime things. She wasn't in _love_ with him or anything. Hell, it wasn't even like that idiot could keep her attention for long. So he could make her laugh? Big fucking deal. He could make her laugh too if he wanted to. Probably wouldn't take any effort at all. She was _his_ girl, after all. He knew what she found funny. And anyway, Gomez was a _dork_. Butch looked a hell of a lot better in leather than that freak ever would.

Except the best part of wearing leather was _taking it off_ and Butch could see Gomez' zipper was decidedly lower than it had been the minute before and as he watched, he found himself wondering almost idly how much trouble he'd get in were he to _beat that asshole's brains out with a fucking napkin dispenser._

"Come on, Butch," Christine purred, sliding her hand down and into his lap. "Let's get outta here and do something _fun_."

It took Butch a moment to get his head back in the game and realize Christine's idea of fun probably wasn't choking Gomez until he turned blue.

"Sure, babe," he growled, trying at the last second to make it sound more sexy than murderous. "Whatever you want."

And Cynthia didn't even notice him leave. She was too busy laughing.

_*_

He'd just have to show her what she was missing, Butch decided, sprawled out on the floor of his hideout. Maybe she'd just forgot what sleeping with a _real_ man was like so she'd gone and wandered off with Gomez instead, thinking he was a good time or something. Well, he'd fix that. He'd fix that so good she couldn't _think _straight.

Butch grinned and turned on his Pipboy to look for Cynthia. He didn't like keeping it on—didn't want anyone looking down at the wrong time and seeing his tracking signal smack in the middle of the restricted zone—but this was worth it. He had a brilliant plan forming already. He'd just go downstairs, sneak past Cynthia's dad, carry her off…

Except the little blue dot he was looking for was not in the medical bay where it should have been.

It was in the Gomez apartment.

Right on top of another dot.

And suddenly Butch wished he'd taken his chances with the napkin dispenser.

*

"I can't do it," Cynthia laughed, staggering backwards. "I don't know how anyone can. You're some kind of mutated freak."

Freddie shook his head and grinned, pulling her back.

"Look, it wouldn't be so hard if you'd stop trying to dance _over_ me."

"Where the hell am I supposed to put my feet? You move, I move."

"Exactly. But the point is to move _with_ me, not _into_ me." He smiled at her and nudged her foot with the tip of his boot. "Start with that foot."

Cynthia couldn't help it. She broke down giggling, her face pressed in the crook of Freddie's neck. She was good at a lot of things. Science, for instance. Chemicals were _easy_. Picking the locks on her dad's medical cabinets was easy. Beating the shit out of little boys who tried to steal her sweet rolls was downright fun. But dancing? Asking her to dance was like asking Andy to make tea. The whole vault fell into chaos at the mere _suggestion_ of asking her to dance.

"I'm a failure," she told him, laughing. "You'll have to make up a new dance for me."

Freddie only grinned and started the music again.

"I don't think trampling people makes much of a dance. Why don't you actually count the steps this time? It helps."

*

Cynthia was still smiling as she made her way down the hallway towards home, strains of music running through her head. It was a pity Freddie was so smitten with Susie or she'd half consider replacing Butch entirely. God knew he was a hell of a lot sweeter. He'd even tolerated being trampled repeatedly for the sake of Butch catching her in Freddie's room.

At least, she hoped Butch had caught her anyway. He did have her set as a little blue dot on his Pip-boy map. Not that she was supposed to know that. That was just one of those things that he'd never admit to. She knew exactly what he'd say if she asked. _Why would I want to know where you are all the time? It's not like we're—_

Cynthia stopped short around the corner, faced with a rather… determined looking Butch striding towards her.

_Yes, _she decided in a distinctly cheerful way as he shoved her against the wall and slammed his lips to hers. _I think he noticed._

Take _that,_ Christine.


	12. Life

45. Life

Author's Note: AU warning. We've been through this before, I think, but remember Cynthia showed up at the vault when she was six/seven. She's about seventeen-ish now.

Summary: Butch wants to know what it's like outside the vault.

—0—

"Hey."

Cynthia woke up from her doze, blinking into the dim blue light nearest her head. Next to her Butch shifted and rolled over, the sheets draped low over his hips.

"I was thinking," he started and she snorted, closing her eyes again.

"You don't think, Butch. Everyone knows that."

There was a moment's pause before Butch spoke again.

"Cyn, I'm serious."

Normally, there wasn't anything in the world that could keep her up when she wanted to sleep, but there was something in his voice that made her open her eyes again. He sounded… lost somehow. Cynthia frowned and rolled over, trying to place his expression through the shadows that painted fairy wings across his face.

"What's up?"

He frowned, pulling stray threads from the mattress for a long moment before he spoke.

"Everybody likes to pretend you've always been here," he said at last. "But I remember when Dad died there wasn't a doctor here. You and your dad didn't show up for another year."

Ah. There it was after eleven years—the question everyone was supposed to pretend wasn't a question at all. Hell, even her dad liked to pretend it wasn't a question. Said she couldn't possibly remember a life other than the vault. _What are you talking about, sweetheart? We've always been here. _But when he said it, he could never quite look her in the eyes.

Her father—the walking polygraph test.

"Yeah, I know. It's weird. I think we're not supposed to talk about it. Overseer's rule or something." She smiled and curled up into his arm, smirking at the ceiling. "I remember you were the first kid I met. You had a bloody nose so I thought you might have been doing something fun."

Butch laughed and ran a hand through her hair.

"I got beat up and you thought I'd be fun?"

"Well, if you were fighting for something worth fighting for, I wanted to know what it was."

He snorted.

"So you always had weird-ass logic. That's good to know. I thought I mighta just hit you too hard that one time."

"Hit _me_ too hard?" Cynthia laughed and sat up, poking him in the stomach. "I broke your _nose_."

"I stepped on Mack's stupid bat and fell into the table." Butch grinned and grabbed her hands, pulling her down and into his lap. "You didn't have nothing to do with it."

Cynthia giggled and tucked her head under his chin.

"If that's what it takes to make you feel better…"

He flicked in the ear with a grin and lay back.

"I'm going to pretend I didn't hear that." And then, after a moment. "So what was it like out there?"

Cynthia shrugged, remembering a whole lot of things that didn't make sense. Heat, angry voices, a sweet man with a ruin of a face, dust, broken glass, skinny dogs…

"It was bright," she said at last. "Not like the fake day-night thing we have going on in here. Like _really_ bright."

_Sun bright_, she wanted to say, but realized belatedly that Butch had never seen the sun.

"I wanna get out there," he murmured, staring off into space. "Wanna _do_ something, you know? I can't stand it here."

"It was… different out there. Harder, I guess. I dunno. I was really little. I don't remember a whole lot. But I remember the… city that we were in was supposed to be one of the best and it was just a crater."

Cynthia sat up a little, trying to show with her hands the fragmented image she saw in her head but giving up after a moment. There was no way to piece the pictures together. There were just too damn many of them. Giant constructs of metal she was strictly forbidden to touch, houses stacked on houses built up like the sides of a bowl, the hopeless resignation of that many people packed in so close together…

"It's hard out there," she said at last with a shrug, settling back into Butch's arms. "You gotta know what you're doing."

"We could make it," Butch said and Cynthia blinked to hear the stubborn desperation in his voice. "We could get out of here, you and me—really tear it up out there. We'd be the baddest gang they'd ever seen."

She wanted to tell him that it was a stupid idea. That in Megaton there was a man like the Overseer—with graying hair and a funny way of talking—whose sole purpose in life was to make sure that the only gang was _his_ gang and that everyone knew in excruciating detail just what would happen if that were to change. But there was no point. Neither of them was ever going to see the outside of the vault alive and if thinking about escaping this tin can got Butch through the day, so be it. God knew she spent enough time daydreaming about stargazing and zombies with sweet smiles.

"Yeah, maybe," she said at last, tilting her head to grin up at him. "We could have a real hideout then. A cave or a house or something cool."

Butch nodded, a faraway look in his eyes.

"My dad used to talk about it out there," he told her, running fingers through her hair. "He wasn't supposed to either. Every time Mom caught him telling one of his stories it was like World War Three all over again."

A bolt of excitement shot through Cynthia's stomach and she turned to look up at him.

"Your dad came from outside?"

But Butch only shrugged.

"I don't think so. I mean, I think he was born here and everything, but I think the vault wasn't always shut like it is now. He used to talk about this giant ship called Rivet City. He was always looking to head back there. Used to tell me as soon as that door opened again me an' him would be gone like bats outta hell." He snorted and pulled the sheet up over the two of them, settling back down into the mattress. "I guess you can see how well _that_ went, huh?"

Cynthia nodded, murmuring something vaguely like agreement as she stared off into the shadows, thinking about all the things they weren't supposed to know or talk about. The vault had been open once upon a time. Butch's dad had left. Hers had shown up with a kid in tow. But now they pretended that the vault had been sealed since day one and that they were all the descendants of Vault-Tec's chosen ones.

What would happen when they had to open the vault again? Their supplies couldn't last them forever no matter how much the Overseer wanted to pretend they could. Yeah, they had their sun-lamps and gardens, but their store of light bulbs would burn out. They'd have to run out of pre-packaged meals and one-size-fits-all suits eventually.

What would happen to them then?


	13. Careful

20. Careful

Author's Note: I feel like everybody's getting tired of Butch and we've still got 20-some chapters left to go. XD

Summary: They need to start being more careful.

—0—

"Oh my god, Cynthia, I am _so _sorry!"

Cynthia blinked, trying to remember if Amata had borrowed anything breakable of hers lately and came up with a stunning blank. Obviously, judging by Amata's reaction to whatever it was, she was supposed to be just as heartbroken.

"Er… What?" she ventured at last.

Amata stared at her.

"You don't _know_?"

Oh, shit. Something horrible and life shattering had happened in her vicinity and she had no idea what it was. Probably her dad had finally gone and gotten himself blown up with one of his insane experiments. Or else Jonas had fallen into a vat of toxic waste and started rampaging through the vault. Either way, whatever it was, she was supposed to have known about it ages ago and she had no clue.

"What are we talking about?" she asked. "You look like the ceiling's falling down around you and I just woke up. You gotta give me time to process these things."

"Oh, dear," Amata sighed and slipped inside, checking the room to see if anyone was listening before starting in on it. "You don't know about Freddie?"

Cynthia frowned. He couldn't be _hurt_. She'd have been paged down to sick-bay a long time ago if that was the case. Not that she was working the medical facilities full time yet, but broken bones definitely ranked somewhere above Cynthia's beauty sleep on the list of things her father found important.

"What's wrong with Freddie?"

"He's an _idiot_, that's what's wrong. You really haven't heard?" Amata looked at her with wide, sympathetic eyes. "He's with _Susie_."

Without thinking, Cynthia grinned, clapping her hands together.

"_Finally_. It's about damn time he jumped her. When was this? This morning? I can't believe I missed it!"

Amata didn't say anything for a long moment, only stood there looking at her like she'd lost her mind.

"You don't _care_?"

"Why would I care? They make such a wonderful couple."

And it was then, watching Amata stare at her in total disbelief that Cynthia's sleep addled mind caught up with her mouth.

"Oh. _Oh_. You were worried because me and Freddie were..." She laughed, color flaring on her cheeks. "No, it wasn't like that. I mean, it _was _like that, but it wasn't _serious_ or anything. I always knew about his crush-on-Susie thing. I'm glad they're together."

"Really?" she asked, laying a gentle hand on her arm. "You're not just being nice about the whole thing? Because it was a real asshole thing of him to do. Just run off like that without even breaking up with you first."

Except breaking up required actually having been together at one point and the most she and Freddie had ever done together was _dance_—horrible dancing at that. Hell, he'd been helping her with Butch so that she'd help _him_ with Susie. And now that she thought about it, she probably _should_ have put some sort of timeline on their fake relationship so that they actually "broke up" before Freddie finally got Susie into bed, but she hadn't even had time enough to _think_ lately now that Butch was feeling so… territorial.

"No, it's fine. Him and me were over before we started, really."

Amata nodded, toying with a strand of hair that had fallen from her bun.

"It wasn't the Butch thing was it?"

And then the Oh Shit feeling really set in as Cynthia felt her carefully crafted totally-not-dating-Butch scenario rock on its axis.

"What Butch thing?" she asked, trying to sound nonchalant and failing miserably.

"The thing you've had for Butch since you decked him at your birthday that one year." She sighed and shook her head. "It _was_ the Butch thing, wasn't it? Oh, Cynthia. I am _so _sorry. It's just like that jerk to go and screw up your relationships."

"It wasn't a relationship, Amata, _really_," she insisted, forcing a smile. "And Butch had nothing to do with it."

Amata nodded, but Cynthia had known her long enough to know she wasn't convinced. She was doing that same disapproving frown thing her father was so famous for, her eyes fixed just right of Cynthia's ear.

"You can do a lot better, you know," she said at last and Cynthia had no idea if they were talking about Butch or Freddie. "What about Glen? Glen likes you."

Cynthia pursed her lips.

"Glen's twenty-four and works in maintenance."

"Butch is eighteen and _cuts_ _hair_," Amata snapped, finally fixing her with that disapproving stare. "You should give Glen a chance. He's sweet."

"I dunno, Amata," she said, pulling out her Poor-Lonely-Me defense. "I just don't feel much like dating right now, you know?"

But Amata still didn't look convinced—only nodded and chewed at the inside of her lip.

"I wish you'd get over him, Cyndie," she said gently. "He's not a nice guy. And yeah, maybe he _is_ different with you, but one of these days he's _really _going to turn into his mother and do you want to stick around for that?"

Cynthia didn't know what to say. She'd thought she had been doing such a brilliant job at hiding it. Maybe not the whole infatuation bit—Amata had known her when she still thought boys had cooties, after all—but at the very least she thought she'd been able to hide the fact they were going at it like rabbits. Had they missed a camera somewhere? Did that mean the Overseer knew? Did her _dad _know? Or was Amata only guessing? What did you say when someone broadsided you with something like that anyway?

In the end though, it didn't matter. Amata only fixed her with a sympathetic smile and turned to leave the room.

"Think about it, okay?" she said and disappeared down the hall without another word.

*

"What do you mean we gotta be more careful? Damn, girl. I barely see you as it is."

Cynthia shrugged and fiddled with the computer screen for lack of anything better to do.

"I just don't want to take any chances, you know."

But Butch crossed his arms and glared, pulling a pack of cigarettes from his pocket.

"What the hell do you think they're gonna do, huh? Kick us out?"

"I'm not worried about _them_, Butch. I'm worried about my dad."

"Fuck your dad, Cyn," he snapped, flipping the lid on his lighter. "What the hell does he know? You're just about eighteen, anyway. He's not exactly the boss of you anymore."

"You don't _get_ it, Butch. He _is_ the boss of me. The frigging Overseer has me slated as the next doctor. I'll be working with him until the vault explodes."

"What? So we're just supposed to run around like this forever? Dodging cameras and living in the goddamned back tunnels?"

"Not forever. Just for now. Until I can figure something else out." She sighed and swept a hand through her hair. "Or at least until I can convince Dad you're a functioning member of society."

"Fuck that. I'm tired of acting like some kind of convict."

"Well, maybe if you didn't start so many fights, Butch, he wouldn't think you _were_ some kind of convict," Cynthia snapped, turning on the fan. "And do you _have_ to smoke in here?"

He glared at her and took a long drag on the cigarette.

"Yeah. As a matter of fact, I do. Go run home to Daddy if it bothers you."

Cynthia shrugged and stood, slamming the desk chair against the keyboard.

"Fine, Butch. Stay down here and sulk if that's what you want to do."

"_I'm _sulking? I'm not the one telling my best damn girl we gotta pretend to _hate_ each other because _daddy might get angry_."

"When did I say that?" Cynthia glared, wanting desperately to throw something at his head and finding herself in the lamentable position with nothing close at hand. "I said we had to be more _careful _and you go and bite my frigging head off because you have some weird-ass fantasy about fucking in the diner."

Butch laughed at that, stubbing out his cigarette against the wall.

"When did I say that? I may have mentioned the arboretum once—up against a tree or something. But I never said anything about the diner. That's _kinky_."

Cynthia glared but the venom wasn't in it. It was hard to stay mad when he smiled like that.

"You were drunk," she snapped. "And stupid."

"No, it's a good idea." He grinned, standing up to saunter towards her. "We might be onto something with this diner idea. You been thinking about it long?"

Cynthia tried to look disapproving and disgusted but ended up laughing instead.

"You, Deloria," she said, punching him in the arm, "are a giant _ass_."


	14. Sleep

30. Sleep

Summary: Cynthia can't sleep... and her toes are cold.

Author's Note: Some time has passed since the last chapter. I mean this story-wise and life-wise. I'd like to try and finish this while I'm off for the summer (gotta love college) but I'm a little meh about writing lately.

—0—

Cynthia rolled over, flopping on her stomach and slamming a fist into the pillow. It didn't help. Neither did her Pip-boy cheerfully informing her from the bedside table that it was currently one in the morning and she had not yet fallen asleep.

This was, she was certain, all Butch's fault. She wasn't sure how yet. She wasn't even sure _why_, but she knew deep down in her soul it was Butch's fault. And the bastard was probably tucked snugly away in his hide-out, sleeping like a baby while she lay here cold as _hell_ at one in the frigging morning.

Cynthia stared at the clock and considered throwing it across the room.

_1:38_

Why in the hell did her father need to keep the stupid thermostat so low anyway? What? Was it summer above ground or something? As far as Brotch could tell them, it was _always_ summer up there.

Cynthia glared at the ceiling and threw her pillow across the room. This was _so_ not fair. They had a test tomorrow and everything. And of course _Amata_ would have studied instead of playing space invaders on her dad's computer. And _Amata_ would have gone to bed at nine o'clock sharp to further her chances at getting the biggest of all possible A's.

And then Amata would pester her for another week about things like _wasted potential_ and _tutoring_ and _where do you keep running off to, anyway?_

She wanted to go shooting. Or at the very least, she wanted to throw stuff at the wall she shared with her dad until he woke up and gave her a sleeping pill or something. There was no reason he had to go and hoard them all in the lab. They were _sleeping pills_ for godssakes. You didn't need a prescription for those—they were like a basic necessity of life.

Cynthia rolled out of bed and grabbed her pillow from its landing spot on top of her drawers.

This was all Butch's fault… somehow.

_1:52_

Butch should have invited her over.

He hadn't even asked. Hell, he hadn't even _looked_ at her after school. He'd gone and slunk off with his Tunnel Snakes and a pack of cigarettes. And yeah, the whole _being careful_ thing was important. But did he have to go _smoke?_ She hated the taste of cigarettes—hated smoking them and doubly hated kissing them. And of course asking Butch to pop a mentat after he smoked was like asking for a frigging miracle.

Cynthia lolled sideways in bed, realizing her train of thought had gotten derailed there somewhere along the way. She couldn't remember what she'd been thinking about though and it was still one in the frigging morning so it didn't matter much.

Maybe if she slammed her head against the wall a few times, she'd be concussed enough to miss the test _and_ get to sleep. That would be _awesome_.

_2:13_

She was never going to sleep again in her lifetime. She was going to go crazy like Beatrice and wander around the vault telling fortunes and sleeping with everything Butch-shaped while writing horrible poetry about the pretty vault décor. And then she'd dye her hair black, wear heavy make-up and a beret made out of Butch's jacket and walk around the vault reading her poetry with a bad accent and an unlit cigarette dangling from her lip. She'd turn the common room into a café and Andy would play the drums and Amata's dad would explode from the sheer unplanned illogic of it all and life would be good.

Cynthia rolled over and wondered vaguely if smothering herself would do much good.

_2:32_

Blankets tied around her neck, Cynthia stalked through the halls with her bat in hand. There was no way in hell she was going to play Run Like An Idiot at two thirty in the frigging morning.

She heard the camera clicking before she saw it and waited until the sound turned towards the restricted door before shuffling around the corner. For a moment she considered smashing the thing into teenie-tiny pieces and delivering them in a neat little package to the Overseer's front door with a lipstick note that read:

_Dear Sir,_

_Kindly shove this up your ass and die._

_Thank you,_

_The Management_

But that sort of plan involved cunning and lipstick and more functioning brain cells than she had available at nearly three in the morning. So instead Cynthia slipped under the camera and used the tip of her bat to push the thing up and off its rotation. It could record the suspicious activities of the ceiling tiles for awhile.

She had sleeping to do.

_2:43_

Frigging Butch locking the frigging doors behind him. What kind of an asshole _did_ that? Yeah, it was good for pretending there was nobody who'd recently managed to _break in _or anything, but there were certain persons in this vault with a test tomorrow who hadn't managed to sleep in eight years.

Cynthia kicked at a particularly offensive speck of dust with all the energy she could readily muster and meandered off down the hallway. Butch was snoring, curled around a pillow with his hair in ten different directions.

Bastard.

She slipped in next to him anyway, curled up against his back and with a contented sigh, closed her eyes… and warmed her floor-frozen toes on the back of his bare leg.

Butch yelped like he'd been lit on fire by a radroach and jerked awake.

The look on his face made everything worth it.


	15. Impulse

03. Impulse

Author's Note: I love Mrs. Deloria. She's so totally inappropriate. XD

Warnings: Mrs. Deloria… and the things Cynthia does with Mrs. Deloria _in the next room._

Summary: They have to be careful, but it's so damn hard.

—0—

"You want to go get a milkshake or something?" Amata asked, heaving her bag onto her shoulder. "Dad said he was going to be busy most of the night and you know how he gets when he's like that. Any little noise…"

Cynthia shook her head, scanning the hall for leather jackets out of habit.

"No. I was gonna go target practice tonight. I haven't got a chance lately, what with working Clinic and all."

Amata laughed and shook her head.

"_Target practice_? Still? Jeeze, Cyndie. You're such a tom-boy."

"Because I can shoot a gun?" She turned to cock an eyebrow at her friend as they walked down the hall together. "That's not tom-boy—that's _smart_."

Amata snorted.

"If you expect there's going to be a vault-wide revolt any time soon, sure. But you know that's not going to happen in a million years."

"God, I hope the vault isn't _around_ a million years from now." Cynthia sniggered. "Talk about creepy."

Amata turned, fixing her with the Look.

"_Oh_?" she drawled, mimicking her father perfectly.

For a moment they stared at each other, both trying to look as outraged and pompous as they could before they broke down laughing.

"Can you imagine?" Cynthia managed between bouts of giggling. "After a million years, we'd all be identical."

"Yeah. We'd all look like Butch." Amata snorted, trying desperately to look serious as she added in a conspiratorial whisper, "or worse—_Mack_."

"Oh, _god_. Can you imagine what the girl-Macks would look like?"

Amata's shoulders shook with the force of not laughing.

"Acne stubble!" she choked out and they were both _gone_.

*

"What the hell took you?" Butch growled, somewhere in between the second kiss and the fourth. "I've been waiting _forever_."

Cynthia smiled into his mouth, the BB gun propped forgotten by the door she sincerely hoped was locked.

"I was _busy_."

"Busy?" Butch pulled back, trying to look offended despite the smirk twitching at the corners of his mouth. "You better not be getting _busy_ with anyone else but me."

"Oh, I'm a regular Casanova," she said, grinning. "Just show me a nice ass and let me go."

"Nice ass, huh?" he purred, lifting her up onto the nearest stack of crates. "I'll show you a nice ass."

Cynthia tried—really she did—but the opportunity was too perfect to resist.

"How?" she said as innocently as she could manage with Butch's long, clever fingers working at her zipper. "Freddie's not here."

*

Butch waited in the hallway outside the bathrooms, keeping well away from the cameras as he waited to hear footsteps coming towards him. Half a pack of cigarettes later and he'd seen Tom Holden and Lucy Palmer but still no Cynthia.

"Goddamn," he heard muttered from the next hall down. "Do you really think you're being _sneaky_, Butch? The whole hallway's filled with smoke."

Despite himself he grinned and ground the cigarette out with the heel of his boot.

"Yeah? Well maybe you should have gotten here sooner."

"I _tried_. Brotch is being a bathroom nazi again. He always is when one of you stupid Tunnel Snakes skip class."

"Hey, what can I tell you? I'm too cool for—"

"If you finish that sentence and it rhymes, I will punch you."

Butch laughed as she rounded the corner and snuck an arm around her waist, pulling her close.

"Whatever you say, baby." He grinned and pressed a kiss into the corner of her mouth. "I got five minutes and I can think of twenty things I'd rather do than argue."

*

"Christine Kendall?"

"Here."

"Cynthia Barlow?"

"I'm here."

"Butch Deloria?"

Brotch sighed and looked up from his attendance sheet, scanning the room.

"No Butch again today?"

"He's sick, Mr. Brotch," Christine said in the sugar-sweet voice that always made Cynthia want to bludgeon her with something. Apparently it had the same effect on Brotch. He only looked at her over the rims of his glasses with the sort of distaste he usually reserved for especially stupid questions and shook his head.

"As sure as I am he's _deathly_ ill—Cynthia, would you be so kind as to take Mr. Deloria his homework after class? I'd like a… professional diagnosis, as it were."

Cynthia looked up from where she was doodling stick-figures that absolutely weren't Butch and smiled.

"Of course." She grinned, looking slightly more maniacal than she'd intended to. "Maybe this way I can finally get him to sit still for his shots."

*

Cynthia shifted the stack of papers from one arm to the other and gave up, kicking the door instead. For a long moment, nothing happened and she wondered if maybe she shouldn't have checked the hide-out first. But before she could turn to go, the door opened and she found herself face to face with a pissed off older woman.

"What the hell d'you want?" she slurred, looking Cynthia up and down, leaning all her weight on the doorframe.

Cynthia didn't smile—according to Butch that was one of the surefire ways to set his mother off when she'd been drinking—and met the woman's eyes dead-on.

"Hello, Mrs. Deloria," she said pleasantly. "Is Butch feeling any better? I've brought his homework."

Ellen stood there for a long moment, looking at her with a sort of grudging respect.

"Well, you're better than that other idiot, anyway," she announced at last, heaving up and away from the door. "Butch's in his room. Don't bother knocking. I've got one hell of a headache and we both know it won't be the first time you've seen him naked."

So saying, Ellen turned and wandered back into her room without another word, leaving Cynthia torn between shock and outright laughter in her wake. _Well… _she thought as she eased the door shut behind her. _That certainly explains a lot._

*

Butch was just heaving himself out of bed as she entered the room, looking distinctly green around the gills.

"Hey, chill out," she told him, setting his homework down on a pile of dirty clothes and textbooks. "You look like you're gonna heave."

"My mom didn't give you a hard time, did she?" he croaked.

"No. I didn't smile at her, so I think she likes me." Cynthia shrugged and crawled onto the bed next to him, pressing him down into the mattress with a wicked grin. "Now, Brotch sent me down here to see if you were really sick. And seeing that you _are_ really sick, I can't go until I kiss you better."

Butch laughed and coughed.

"Better not," he said, trying to push her off with all the strength of a wet kitten. "You'll get it too."

Cynthia grinned.

"That wasn't," she said, pulling down the sheet, "the kind of kiss I had in mind."

*

Cynthia hated sorting prescriptions. The only thing she hated more than sorting prescriptions was Christine. What did sorting little pill bottles have to do with being a doctor? Yes, the chlorpromazine had to sit on the shelf _above_ the diazepam, but was it _really_ necessary? She had far better things to do than sit here reciting the alphabet over and over under her breath all day.

Like eavesdropping on her father for instance.

Hearing her father speaking to someone in the next room, she eased away from the shelves and leaned back in her chair to look. Her stomach clenched at the sight of Butch sitting on the examining table, blood dripping from his hand as her father poked the gash with a pair of tweezers.

"Well, I think you got all of the glass out, at any rate. A few stitches and a tetanus shot and you should be good as new."

"Aw, shit," Butch groaned, looking altogether too pale. "You can't just bandage it up?"

James shook his head with an apologetic smile and propelled his chair across the room, gathering the things he needed on a sterilized metal tray.

"The cut is too close to the bone. If it infects, you could lose a finger."

Under normal circumstances, the look on Butch's face would have been humorous. But as it was, there was still blood dripping from his hand and Cynthia really didn't like the shade of green he was turning.

"I think you're exaggerating a little there, Dad," she said.

James cocked an eyebrow in her direction, but she could see the glimmer of mischief in his eyes.

"Ah, Cynthia. Could you grab the tetanus vaccine for me?" he said and pulled the biggest hypodermic needle he could find from the cabinet.

"_Dad_," she snapped, stifling a smile. She knew better than to encourage him when he was like this. Butch would probably pass out before they could even get close to him with the sutures. Though that was probably what James was aiming for. Better if Butch wasn't awake and watching the needle.

"Oh, all right," he laughed, pulling out the proper hypodermic. And then, seeing the look on Butch's face, he added with an apologetic smile, "medical humor. Doctors have to get their kicks in somehow."

"Hey, no offence, doc, but how about letting Cynthia patch me up?" Butch asked, cradling his hand. "It's not that I don't _trust_ you or anything, it just that I think maybe she could use the practice."

James chuckled and wheeled back to the examination table. But before he could reply, Jonas burst into the room, grinning like a madman.

"Hey, doc, you got a minute? You _really _want to see this."

Cynthia watched, tetanus booster in hand as her father's mischievous humor morphed immediately into excited surprise.

"The serum is taking effect?" he asked, standing. "So soon?"

"It's doing more than that. The specimen is actually _reproducing_," Jonas said and ducked back down the hall. "You _have_ to see it for yourself.

Cynthia watched as her father started towards the door like a kid at Christmas and stopped, torn between fixing Butch's hand and attending his experiment.

"New breakthrough, Dad?" she asked, taking his place at Butch's side. "Don't worry. I'll take care of him. You run off and play."

"_Play? _I'll have you know it's very important work I'm doing," he said, grinning. "It'll change mankind forever."

And with that he ducked out of the room after Jonas, leaving the two of them together.

*

"So…" Butch said after she'd finished stitching his hand together. "Your dad gonna be gone awhile?"

"Probably the rest of the day if his _specimens are reproducing_ or whatever it is that has him so excited," she laughed and rolled the cart back into the corner. "You underestimate the sheer level of geekery my father is capable of. He once spent an entire day watching _microbes_."

"So he won't care if I do this?" Butch asked, jumped down from the table and pulled her close for a kiss.

Cynthia laughed, making a face as she extracted herself from his arms.

"One," she said, trying to look stern, "this is a medical facility."

"Aw, com'on, babe." Butch grinned. "_Medical facility_ never stopped you before."

"And _two," _she continued. "You taste like cigarettes. God, Butch. Have a breath mint or something."

Smirking, Butch backed her against the wall with an aroused glint in his eyes.

"Oh, I'm gonna have _something_ all right," he purred, good hand tracing patterns on her hip. "Just you wait."


	16. Fight

28. Fight

Author's Note: Shakespeare plays are like cockroaches. They're really irritating and capable of surviving a nuclear disaster.

Summary: Butch realizes just how much he likes fighting with Cynthia.

—0—

"Man, you look like shit."

Butch jerked awake and nearly fell over, surprised to find himself leaning against a wall with Hannon staring back at him.

"Huh?"

Mack laughed from where he leaned against the wall further down and pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket.

"You're dead on your feet, man. What were you doing last night?" He sniggered, digging through his pockets for a lighter. "Or maybe I should be asking _who_?"

Butch grinned, trying not to look as exhausted as he felt.

"Yeah, wouldn't you like to know? You _wish_ you had my skills."

"Skills, hell," he snorted, blowing a cloud of smoke towards the blinking detector light on the ceiling. "I wouldn't be surprised if you shacked up with Old Lady Palmer."

"Naw. All those sweetrolls?" Hannon laughed, finding his place against the wall next to Butch. "If he shacked up with Old Lady Palmer, he'd weigh more than _Amata_."

"True," Mack agreed, blowing another cloud of smoke towards the fire detector.

Butch closed his eyes again, listening to the conversation pass right over his head. Man, he _wished _he'd been with a girl last night. But Cynthia's dad had been watching her like he was just waiting for Butch to burst through the door in a loincloth and carry her off at any minute and his mom had been way too shit-faced last night to leave to her own devices. He'd stayed up half the night telling her it wasn't her fault he was a horrible excuse for life and that it wasn't her fault her husband was dead and that everything was just fine and peachy with the world.

He was _exhausted_.

"Would you lookit that," Mack announced, jerking Butch awake in time to see Amata crossing the hall in front of him. "Daddy's little angle all dressed up. Dollin' yourself up for me, baby?"

"_Ugh_, like I would ever want anything to do with _you_," she snapped, bringing her arms down around her waist. "Get a _life_, Mack."

Mack laughed and dropped his cigarette onto the grating, grinding it out with the heel of his boot.

"Whoa! We got a live one on our hands, boys," he leaned forward like he was coming in for a kiss. "That's good. I like my women feisty."

"You like women? Since when? And why didn't anyone tell me?"

Butch opened his eyes and tilted his head back as Cynthia made her way down the corridor. She grinned back at him with a glint in her eyes and Butch smirked. They had to be _careful_. Right. Because Cynthia's bedroom eyes were the epitome of _subtle_ right now.

That didn't stop him from checking her out though.

"Well, well, well," he drawled, making a show of looking her up and down. "Look what crawled out of the labs. Guess they finally let you outta your cage, huh?"

"Yeah, they let me out for walkies every now and then," she said, looking mischievous. "Which is more than I can say for you. Getting that good ol' Deloria beer-gut there, Butch?"

One of these days he really _was_ going to swoop down in a loincloth and carry her off. She'd really get a kick out of it. Something about doing what she wasn't supposed to just made her day. Sneaking around after curfew, hanging out with him… Butch really wasn't the kind of guy to hang around wondering about the future, but one of these days it was just going to be them—no adults, no worries,_ no rules—_and it was going to be the best damn thing that ever happened.

"Butch, you just gonna stand there and take that?" Hannon growled, elbowing him in the ribs.

He snorted and shook his head, grinning at her.

"Nah, ain't worth my time," he said, pulling out his own battered pack of cigarettes. "Go on, Lab Rat. Why don't you take your little girlfriend and get out of here?"

"G_od_, Butch," Amata snapped, her voice just a fraction too high. "She is _not_ my _girlfriend_."

But Cynthia only struck a pose, mimicking Beatrice's impromptu performance in the diner the night before.

"You _wish_," she laughed, making a face. "Some fodder for your _fantasies_, maybe."

"Oh, knock it off, Cynthia," Amata muttered, grabbing her elbow and pulling her down the hall. "Don't sink to their level."

"Yeah, that's right! Run off and cry to Daddy!" Mack laughed, banging on the metal walls so that the echo ricocheted around them. "Go tell him all about the big bad Tunnel Snakes!"

"Tunnel _worm!_" Cynthia called back and Butch sniggered, taking a long drag on his cigarette and admiring the view.

"Goddamn," Mack muttered. "They day they get rid of her the better."

"I like her," Butch snapped, staring off down the hallway after Cynthia's retreating back. "She's alright."

Mack and Hannon turned to stare at him like Butch had sprouted a second head and started reciting Shakespeare.

"You crazy?" Hannon asked.

Mack shrugged and shook his head, finishing his cigarette in a cloud of smoke.

"Hey, you wanna run around with the Overseer's kid, be my guest. Just don't expect to stay a Tunnel Snake very long."

Butch glared and pushed away from the wall, putting his smokes back into his pocket.

"Not _her_. The Lab Rat. She's pretty okay."

"So it was _her _keeping you up all night?" Hannon asked, with something that might have been his attempt at a leer.

"Not in a million years," Mack snorted. "Butch ain't that brave _or_ that stupid."

For his part Butch smirked and kept his mouth shut.

Cynthia was going to get a kick out of this.


	17. Engagement

41. Engagement

Author's Note: So apparently if you go into the GECK, you can get some of James' dialogue from the cut sequences. And one of the things he said was "Stop fussing! You look great! Now go. You want to be late for your own prom?" So I took that… and changed it entirely.

—0—

She looked hideous. Everything was all wrong. Her dress was wrong, her hair was wrong, her makeup—her makeup looked like she'd put it on hanging upside down from a _clown_. She couldn't be seen in public like this. She _certainly_ couldn't go to _prom_ like this. People would _see her_. They'd take _pictures_. Eighty years from now they'd still be laughing about how hideous she was. She couldn't possibly—

"Stop fussing," her father said, breaking her from her thoughts. "You look great!"

Cynthia tore her eyes away from the mirror long enough to glare at him.

"I look like the wrong end of a monkey."

She was _not_ a dress girl. Hell, she _liked_ the vault suits. Everyone looked stupid in them so she didn't feel like such an idiot when she walked out in the morning. Besides that, _they came off_ _fast_. This thing had so many clasps and pulls and zippers she'd need Amata and a pair of wire cutters to get it off. Butch couldn't even get her _bra_ off without help, let alone this torture device.

But her father only laughed and crossed his arms, shooting her the look that usually prefaced _Katherine warned me about this._

"You look _great_," he insisted. "But you'd better get going. It's a quarter 'till. You don't want to be late for your own prom, do you?"

"Yes," she muttered, turning back to the mirror. "I do. I want to be so late it's over when I get there."

James smiled and stepped away from the door.

"Don't be ridiculous. Go have fun. You'll be the belle of the ball."

A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth and Cynthia turned, taking her purse from the bedside table before following him out.

"You're a dork, Dad."

"This is true," he laughed. And then, quieter, "Your mother would have loved to see you now."

"So she could blackmail me with pictures of myself, probably." Cynthia grinned, punching the _open_ code into the door's keypad. "See ya later, Dad. Don't wait up."

Cynthia slipped out, waving at her dad through the window. He only laughed and shook his head, turning back to whatever it was he'd been doing and suddenly Cynthia was struck by how… out of place he looked amongst the well worn furniture and family photos.

Like a ghost.

*

"It's about _time_," Amata snapped when she turned the corner. "I've been waiting here for a half hour now. Everybody's already inside."

Cynthia cocked an eyebrow.

"Why are you waiting for me? I thought you were coming with Jason?"

But Amata only shrugged and shifted, glancing away towards the door.

"I figured it was kinda stupid to come with anybody. It's just down the hall."

Well, that was… strange, Cynthia decided, watching as Amata steadfastly avoided her eyes. She'd been excited about going with Jason last week.

"Something happen?" she asked at last, but Amata only shrugged and shouldered open the door.

"It's just a stupid idea, is all. Why do you have to question everything I do?"

Cynthia frowned and turned to snap back at her but stopped at the last second, her eyes catching Butch's from across the room. He was… he was actually wearing a _suit_. And yeah, it was probably his dad's old suit and yeah, it did kinda match Christine's in a sickening sort of way, but he looked so… so _perfect. _AndChristine was jabbering on about something like the world depended on it, but he was just standing there… looking at _her_ with his mouth ever so slightly open—like he wanted to carry her off into a supply closet somewhere—and Cynthia couldn't help smirking back at him.

Maybe the dress wasn't so bad…

Next to her Amata sighed and took her elbow, guiding her towards an open corner of the room.

"He's here with _Christine_," she told her once they'd reached open air. "And she's been hanging all over him all night so pretending he's some kind of fairytale prince isn't going to help matters."

"What matters?" she snapped, irritated. "And what the hell's your problem, anyway?"

"The non-existent you-and-Butch matters. And this isn't about me. Stop pining after that idiot and have _fun_."

"Because you've been just smiles and ponies so far?" She asked, lips pursed into a thin line. "What's up?"

Amata sighed and leaned back against the wall, stopping just short of running a hand through her perfectly crafted hair.

"I _know _you, Cynthia. You two are going to hook up and do something really stupid that you'll regret the next morning and I don't want to see that happen."

"Do you ever?" She scanned the room, looking for Butch in the crowd and failing miserably. "What brought this latest burst of good samaritanism on, anyway?"

"Christine," she said shortly. "She's talking about how they're gonna get _engaged_."

Cynthia's head snapped around at that.

"She said _what?_"

Amata only looked at her with her usual patient sympathy and shrugged.

"In the bathroom, I heard her talking to those other idiots about his mother's engagement ring. That he'd give it to her as soon as he could convince his mom it was a good idea, but that _you know what Ellen is like when it comes to him_."

Ellen was a drunk, not an idiot. She knew her son. She'd given birth to him, after all. And the day she gave him her engagement ring was the day hell froze over. Butch couldn't even pick his favorite _color_ let alone pick his _wife_.

Cynthia laughed and shook her head.

"Then Christine's a gullible idiot. Anyone with eyes can see Butch isn't the marrying type."

Amata grinned and nodded, pushing away from the wall.

"Then why are _you_ so intent on catching him?"

Cynthia shrugged and turned to rejoin the crowd.

"He makes me laugh."

*

It was almost midnight before Butch found a way to extract himself from Christine's clutches and make his way over to her, but the awed look on his face made everything worth it.

"Hey, Igor," he said, stopping himself just short of reaching for her. "Nice dress."

She grinned, feeling like an idiot.

"Nice suit."

He grinned back at her and glanced around to see if anyone was looking before he leaned in, slipping his hand into its usual place on her hip.

"Wanna head somewhere more private?"

She glanced over his shoulder at the people still dancing.

"What about Christine?"

Butch grinned a little wider, leaning in until she could smell the peppermint on his breath.

"Told her I had a _prior engagement_."

Heat pooled in her stomach and Cynthia closed her eyes, willing away the blush rising on her cheeks. Butch _knew_ she had a thing for him and big words and since when had _careful _meant _get Cynthia hot and bothered in public _anyway?

"Walk fast," she told him, meeting his mischievous smirk with one of her own. "And keep talking."


	18. Drunk

19. Drunk

Summary: Butch's idea of romance almost always involves gin.

—0—

Cynthia had never been very impressed with Butch's idea of romance. Generally it involved little more than a bed, some liquor and Butch spending half an hour trying to work the clasp to her bra as she shook with laughter. Tonight was no different. There was a bed—a bed no one would walk in on, no less—three bottles of whisky, an eighth of gin and something that may have been rum before all the cola got into it.

But as Cynthia was hazily certain there had been _more_ than three bottles of whisky, an eighth of gin and something that may have been rum at one point during the night, Butch was _incredibly_ romantic.

And so, she suspected, was she.

"This," she said and had to try again when the word got mangled somewhere along the way. "This is the best thing _ever."_

Butch grinned and set the bra down. He'd been trying to unhook and rehook it for the last few minutes but had found his hands rather uncooperative.

"You mean _I_ am the best thing ever."

"Yeah." Cynthia grinned and leaned back into the pile of pillows Butch had brought down just for the occasion in a rare show of romantic insight. "_I_ am the best thing ever."

She rolled out of the way with roughly the grace of a beached whale as Butch attempted to use her bra as a slingshot for his empty pack of cigarettes.

"You stay over there," she giggled, trying to inch away with the big mattress while still using it as a shield. "You jus' stay on the baby bed and have your bottle."

Butch put the bra down and struggled upright, staring at all three of her with laser intensity.

"What are you insin… insingooatin'?"

Cynthia peeked over the mattress.

"s'a big word," she said, trying to tug the sheet away from him and onto her side of the barrier without his noticing. "S'cheating. You know what big words do to me."

It was, apparently, the right thing to say as Butch grinned and made a grab for the nearest bottle.

"I thin' I made it up. Me an' words, you know—we're like _this_."

The _this_ in question may very well have been accompanied by a gesture but it got lost somewhere along the way and never quite made it.

"You know a whole lot of sexy words," Cynthia told him with sage certainty and laid down on the metal grating with the mattress leaning against the wall like a tent over her. "Why dun you use 'em more often?"

"I'm not a—a word kinda guy, you know? I'm a Tunnel Snake. And Tunnel Snakes don't hang around with… with…"

Cynthia struggled out from behind the mattress a little until she could just see his hand making circles in the air.

"With what? Girls? I'm pretty sure it used to be girls."

"No." Butch frowned and sat up, pulling the mattress back where it belonged before climbing over it to loom over her. "Tunnel Snakes _definitely _hang out with girls. I think that's part of—part of the contract or somethin'. I was gonna say worms."

"Worms?" Cynthia blinked up at the giant head swimming through her vision. "Tunnel worms?"

"No, the other kind," he said and fell back with a thump. "Book worms. I don't do the whole _book_ thing."

That sort of thing probably shouldn't have struck her as funny as it did but Cynthia sniggered anyway and clambered back onto the mattress.

"You do me."

Butch laughed and pulled her over and into his lap with as much dexterity as he could manage.

"Hell, yeah, I do. I do a damn good job of it too. Only the best for my best girl."

Cynthia snorted and curled into his chest, wanting something to drink but not liking the distance between her and the wavering bottlelike shape at the edge of the bed.

"Yeah, an' I bet Christine's your best girl too. An' Susie, and 'Lizbeth, an'—"

"Nobody but you, baby," he said, and pulled away with the look on his face that usually prefaced Something Profound. "I _love_ you."

Cynthia blinked and stared at him, waiting for the rest of the joke. But Butch just sat there and stared back at her like he was waiting for _her_ to say something and she decided she _really_ didn't like the flippy-flops her stomach was doing.

"I think you're drunk."

Butch laughed, that _waiting_ look leaving his eyes and everything lurched abruptly back to normal.

"You saying I can't hold my liquor? I'm a Tunnel Snake, Cyn—we're the best there is."

She sniggered, relieved.

"Best at passing out, an' jerking off, an' doing strange, unmentionable things to—"

He cut her off with a startlingly well placed kiss—more luck than sobriety—and pressed her back down into the bed with a mischievous smirk.

"Yeah? Well how 'bout I just show you a _real _tunnel snake an' put all these _misconception_ things to rest right now?"

Cynthia opened her mouth to reply but Butch's head ducked out of her line of sight and suddenly she couldn't really remember what they'd been arguing about, but whatever the hell it was, it didn't matter so long as he kept on doing that _fucking_ _magnificent_ trick with his tongue.


	19. Disaster

01. Disaster

Summary: James knows his daughter isn't an idiot… except when she is.

Author's Note: I used and modified more dialogue from the white-out bits again.

Author's Note 2: I've had these next four on my harddrive for awhile and figured I should post them finally. But nobody freak out; I totally plan to start writing this again.

—0—

His daughter was not an idiot. James knew this with the same certainty he usually applied to gravity. His daughter was simply _not an idiot_. She didn't especially excel when it came to schoolwork, but he knew it was only because she didn't see the point. As much as he tried to ignore it, Cynthia remembered a life outside the vault and the memory of a war-eaten landscape simply didn't make sense when faced with the History of Overseers for the eighty-second time.

But that did not mean she was an idiot. She knew the difference between right and wrong and while she reveled in thwarting authority, hell so did he. The only problem being that _he_ was the authority in question at the moment. But Cynthia was not an idiot. When she'd said not to wait up, it was simply because she expected prom to run a little late. It certainly wasn't because she had no intention of coming home, because his daughter was _not an idiot._

And yet the bed was as untouched as it had been the night before and the little bag of spare clothes she took with her when she stayed at Amata's was still in the closet. Which meant that his daughter was, in fact, an idiot. Because it was very obvious she had not come home to change out of her prom dress. And if she hadn't felt she needed a change of clothes, well, it was likely because she wasn't _wearing_ clothes. And if she _wasn't wearing clothes_ around a certain member of the opposite sex—if _sex _was even an _issue—_there was going to be _hell to pay._

James sat down at the tiny kitchen table and took a deep, calming breath, wondering vaguely what Katherine would do as he turned on his Pip-boy. She would laugh, he decided as it warmed up. She'd probably look at him over the tops of her too-large lab goggles with that faraway smile of hers and say, "_Remember when we were that age, James? The look on my father's face…"_

Except when he was_ that age_, he'd never carried a switch blade and a pack of cigarettes. And, yes, perhaps he had been a little too keen on volatile chemical combinations, but his gang—if you could even call it a gang—had consisted of a dozen bright eyed anti-authoritarian dreamers, not a bunch of leather clad delinquents.

James relaxed a little when the map of the vault finally came up and scrolling over the Deloria apartment revealed only one little dot. Butch wasn't home either, apparently, but that didn't mean anything. After all, unless Christine suddenly contracted syphilis, she was not in any way his responsibility.

Except as he was scrolling over to check the pip-boy signals from the Overseer's apartment, he noticed a little green dot flickering in a restricted section.

A little green dot that had likely gotten drunk the night before and so had forgotten to turn off his pip-boy.

A little green dot that had gotten drunk the night before _with his daughter_.

Because there was only one little green dot in the entire vault idiotic enough to break into the restricted section and risk _flaunting_ his presence there. And that little green dot in question had been making a nuisance of himself since they'd showed up in this godforsaken vault and if he had so much as laid a _finger_ on Cynthia, he was about to personally experience a nuclear meltdown and it _would not be pretty._

_*_

His daughter was not an idiot. But he was fairly certain that was a Tunnel Snakes jacket she was wearing and he was just as certain there wasn't all that much to speak of _under_ it.

"Oh shit," Butch swore under his breath, blinking at him through bloodshot eyes as Cynthia scrabbled to find a sheet that wasn't draped over Butch's lap for a damn good reason.

"H…hey, Dad," she managed, trying for innocence as she zipped the jacket up as far as it could go. "What are you doing here?"

James clenched his jaw so hard it hurt, keeping his hands firmly tucked behind his back.

"I'm going to go turn around and go back to the lab," he said evenly, wondering in the back of his mind if _strangling that goddamned punk sonofabitch_ would be the straw that broke the Overseer's patience. "And in ten minutes, when I decide to stop home, I expect to find you there—dressed and sober. Am I understood?"

Cynthia's face fell and James couldn't help noticing she looked at Butch before she answered.

"Yes, Dad."

James turned to go and started down the hallway, stopping dead in his tracks as Butch's voice followed him out.

"Com'on, Cynthia. Tell him to go fuck himself. You can do what you want."

For a brief moment, James' vision went red. He wasn't a particularly violent man, despite his persistent affection for volatile chemicals. The only other time in his life when he had seriously contemplated _strangling someone with his bare hands_ had been back in Megaton when Colin had thought it would be _funny _to let Jericho _mind the girl-child. _Though now that he thought of it, the only thing that had kept Colin from meeting an abrupt and messy end had been Cynthia's steadfast refusal as a child to go anywhere Gob wasn't.

"Mr. Deloria," he called, resisting the urge to go back and part the little idiot's head from his shoulders. "You had best hope you do not require medical attention in the near future. If I _ever_ catch you near my daughter again, I will _neuter _you."

*

Cynthia crossed her arms and glared right back at him, still wearing that goddamned leather jacket but at least now there was a vault suit under it.

"Dad, I think you should know I turned eighteen three months ago."

"This is not about your age, Cynthia. This is about being a mature and responsible adult."

"Oh, for godssake!" she said suddenly, throwing down the book that had been laying forgotten in her lap for the last half-hour. "Let's be honest for once. This is about Butch being an asshole."

James pursed his lips.

"This is not about Butch. This is about _you."_

Cynthia only glared back at him, looking eerily like her mother, and yet in the same instant completely alien to him. How could it be that this angry young woman was his child? It couldn't possibly have been ten years since Katherine died. Since he'd locked himself into the vault to keep his giggling, sun-browned imp of a girl safe…

Suddenly James felt lost. When had she grown up? When had he _missed_ it? Had she sprouted into the mirror of her mother when he ducked off to the lab?

"What do you want from me?" she snapped, pushing up from the couch to stride for the fridge. "All my life you've been telling me to _grow up_, giving me this same damn _maturity and responsibility_ lecture every time I even _look _the wrong way. But god forbid I _act_ like an adult and make my own choices—"

"_Choices_?" James scowled at her as she rummaged for something that wouldn't aggravate her hangover. "Don't give me that. You were drunk. Both of you. What if I hadn't walked in? Did you think about that? What if the Overseer found you first?"

"Oh, god forbid the great and powerful _Overseer _get an eyeful," she spat. "I am so fucking _tired_ of the Overseer."

"Well, you'll have to get used to it. Actions have consequences, and in this case those consequences involve the Overseer."

"Why?" she snapped, emerging with a bottle of water. "What harm were we doing? We weren't _wasting resources _or _damaging vault property_ or murdering innocents or anything. There's not one person in this goddamned vault that can give us a good reason that hall is closed."

"It could be closed to keep _kids_ from sneaking off to get _drunk."_

"I'm _eighteen! _I am allowed to _drink_._"_

"Not as long as you live in my house, you're not. Jesus, Cynthia," he shook his head, running his fingers through graying hair and wondering vaguely when he got so old. "Do you even _remember_ last night? There were bottles _everywhere_."

"_Your house?_" she sneered. "In case you haven't noticed, Dad, this isn't a _house_. We left the houses behind when we buried Mom and came to live in a _tin can_ so _you_ could experiment in peace!"

So saying, she turned on her heel and stormed into her room.

"Do _not_ bring your mother into this!" James shouted, following after her. "This has nothing to do with her."

"This has everything to do with her!" Cynthia growled, slamming open the doors to her closet. "She got sick, Dad. She died. Shit happens. You lost her and now you're so damn scared of losing me that you can't see the goddamn truth if it danced naked in front of you."

"The truth? You want the _truth_? Truth is, you would have died too if we'd stayed up there. I did what I did to keep you _safe_."

She threw the bag out of her closet and stopped, looking at him without really seeing him.

"Those were the only two options, huh?" she said and the suppressed anger in her voice was far worse than the shouting. "Die out there or live in here? Because I'm starting to think there's not much of a goddamned difference between them."

James took a deep breath, forcing himself to calm down.

"You barely remember it out there, Cynthia. It's not the fairy tale you make it out to be."

"Oh, so we're talking about it now?" she snorted. "Now it actually happened? No '_you can't possibly remember that far back, Cynthia'? _No '_don't be silly—we've always lived here'?_"

James sighed and sat down on the edge of the bed.

"Honey, I understand you're uncomfortable here. I know you think I'm some alien sent to torment you, but I _get it_. You have to understand though; running around with Butch is _not_ the answer."

She stared back at him, feet planted in a fighter's stance in front of the closet, face blank.

"Why not?" she said at last and suddenly she looked seconds away from tears. "What else am I supposed to do? Get married? Have kids? I don't want to live like that, Dad. I don't want my husband picked out for me and the number of kids I'll have set by some asshole with a god complex. I'm not going to do it."

"No one's asking you to," James said softly, watching as Cynthia put the suit she'd grabbed back on its hanger.

"Not yet. My birthday's not in summer like everybody else's. The Overseer's pretending I'm not eighteen yet. Just like he pretends Butch is a year younger than he is. We're mistakes, Dad. We're flaws in his little plan. You and I weren't born here and I don't think Butch's dad was either."

Katherine would know what to say to this, James decided, watching as his daughter slumped down in a patched armchair. She'd know how to deal with an existential crisis. But as much as he hated the Butch thing—as much as he would happily strangle the life out of the little punk—James sympathized with his daughter's need to escape. He'd been itching to get out of this crowded little cave for years now himself. There was only so much he could research without access to the actual _equipment_.

"You're safe here, kiddo," he said at last, rising for the door. "That's what matters."

"Let me guess," she offered up from where she'd sunk further into the chair. "Here comes the part where you tell me I'd be better off forgetting about the outside and Butch both."

James closed his eyes for a moment, trying not to see Katherine staring out at him from his daughter's lost blue eyes.

"That would be best, yes. I don't want you seeing him, Cynthia. He's a bad influence."

"Say what you mean," she muttered. "You think he's an immoral jerk that would start a vault-wide revolt just to relieve the tedium and that he'll have me knocked up before I'm twenty."

James paused at the door and stifled a sad smile, seeing far too much of himself behind Katherine's blue eyes.

"Yes, dear. That's exactly what I think. Promise me you won't run after him."

Cynthia only shrugged and curled up in the chair.

"Whatever, Dad."

And James wasn't an idiot. He knew damn well that was the best he'd get out of her. She was too much like him. She never wanted something more than she did the minute she knew she couldn't have it. It'd been like that with him and Katherine—hell, he was still like that with their pet project.

"I just want you to make good choices, honey—to do the right thing," he said at last, one hand on the door frame. "Just… keep that in mind."


	20. Idiot

26. Idiot

Summary: Cynthia feels like an idiot and Amata isn't helping.

—0—

Cynthia's head hurt like hell, she couldn't remember great chunks of last night—like how she'd ended up in Butch's jacket, for one—and the look Amata was giving her just now was _not_ helping. She knew her dad had let her in here in the hopes Amata would _at least throw some logic in her direction_ but she was _not_ in the mood for it.

"Look, save the lecture, would you," she said before Amata could start. "I don't care."

Amata only blinked at her and Cynthia curled a little farther into her chair, waiting for the inevitable.

"Please tell me that is actually Paulie's jacket," she said at last. "And that you are _not_ as much of an idiot as I think you are."

"Fuck you, Amata," she ground out, pulling Butch's jacket tighter around her. "Not everything in the world has to live up to your idea of perfect."

Amata only shook her head, looking so much like the Overseer Cynthia wanted to shoot something.

"There's a big gap between my idea of perfect and being a total _moron_, Cynthia. What in the hell were you thinking?"

"I was thinking that Butch makes me happy and I can do whatever the hell I want without other people running my life for me."

"He came with Christine!"

"So what, she has dibs now? Screw her."

Cynthia curled her legs under her and zipped the jacket up. She was so damn sick of Christine. For that matter, she was so damn sick of Amata's goddamned lectures. She was a grown woman now and she could do whatever the hell she wanted to. And if that happened to include running off with Butch every so often, then what the hell? It wasn't anyone's business. It certainly wasn't _Amata's_ business. And funny how lots of them had played Overseer as kids, but Amata had never _stopped. _She still tried to run everybody's life. Still kept on with her _well meaning advice _and _moral lectures_ and Cynthia wanted nothing better than just to run so far away from this goddamned place and _her_ she'd be no more than a blur in the distance.

"You're an idiot, Cynthia," Amata said, crossing her arms. "If Deloria was the prize you make him out to be, he'd have gone with _you_."

"Did you ever think that maybe I knew about it beforehand?" Cynthia snapped, glaring from behind the turned up collar. "That maybe we had an agreement going because I didn't want anyone putting their goddamned nose in my business?"

Amata glared and tore a hand through her hair.

"I just don't understand how you can be so _stupid_, Cyn. Do you think he _loves_ you? Hell, do you think he loves anybody but himself?"

"Why does he _have_ to love anybody?" she snapped, glaring back from the shadowy recesses of her chair. "Why the _fuck_ does there always have to be something _more_?"

And that was just it. That was the problem right there in black and white. It wasn't enough that they had fun. It wasn't enough that she could make him laugh after Ellen went on one of her binges or that Butch made her feel like she wasn't trapped without hope of escape. Apparently, that sort of thing would never be enough because that sort of thing _wasn't important. _A sense of humor didn't make babies, after all. A proper cuddle didn't _preserve the integrity of the vault._

"You just don't understand, Amata."

"And yet it's funny how you can never explain it to me," she said, glaring. "What makes a guy hell bent on causing trouble and destroying everything my father has worked for worthwhile?"

Cynthia gaped at her.

"Your _father_?" she managed at last. "Your father is an egomaniacal dick-wad trying to brain control the rest of us into worshipping him. And yeah, so maybe it worked on you, but maybe the rest of us aren't that—"

"That _what_, Cynthia?" Amata cut in, glowering. "That _stupid_? Because selling your soul for a chain-smoking wannabe gangster is _smart?_ Well, god save me from the geniuses then, because I'd sure as hell rather be _brainwashed_."

"Then why are you still _here_?" Cynthia asked, rising from the chair. "Go run back to your father and tell him how _bad_ I've been if you're so damn angry. Hell, maybe if I'm lucky he'll kick me out of the vault."

Amata shook her head, arms crossed over her chest and Cynthia had never wanted so badly in her life to throw something at her head. She didn't get it. She'd never gotten it. Hell, she'd never _tried_. She'd just looked at her and thought about _poor, deluded Cynthia _and how much goddamned _better_ it was to play at some kind of celibate _saint_ while her dad tried to be _God_.

"You know what, Cynthia?" Amata said at last. "I've tried to be nice to you. I've tried to be a friend. But I can't do it anymore. I just can't help you. I'm done. You're too destructive."

"Sure," Cynthia snorted, hands clenching without her quite meaning them to. "Because you've got _so_ many other friends, Amata. Because everyone in the vault is just _lining up _to get turned in to the Overseer for their bad habits."

Amata turned beet red from the roots of her hair to the collar of her vault suit.

"There is a difference between bad habits and forging ration coupons, you know," she ground out.

"And it's funny how Butch is nineteen and yet he doesn't _get _any. And that wouldn't happen to be because he called you _fat_ last year, would it?"

"Stop it, Cynthia!" she shouted, hands balled into fists at her side. "Just stop it! Your little stories aren't _cute_ anymore. Join the real world, would you? Butch is seventeen—just like you, just like me. You're not older than the rest of us, you didn't come down from Topside—there's nothing even _left _Topside. Stop with your stupid fantasies and _grow up_!"

Cynthia stood there, head pounding from the noise and the light and felt absurdly like laughing. There wasn't anything left up there because Amata's father _said_ there wasn't. There weren't cities built around leftovers from the war and perpetually hungry dogs roaming the wastelands in between. There weren't men up there disfigured by radiation or roaming gangs of psychotics. There wasn't anything like that because in the beginning, Alphonse Almodovar had created the heavens and the earth and when he said "let there be light" he hadn't said anything about a fucking _sun._

And it was funny in a sick, horrible way because this was it. If she wanted to stay here—if she wanted to keep her goddamned sanity—the truth of it didn't matter. The only thing that mattered was what the Overseer said. And if the Overseer said there was no such thing as sun and sky, well what did the rest of these poor deluded idiots know anyway? And if he said the food and light bulbs would never run out, they wouldn't. Because the only logic was _his_ logic and if he hadn't okayed it first, it wasn't logic at all.

Cynthia felt her stomach twist and closed her eyes, trying not to look as green as she felt.

"Look, Amata, just go," she said without venom. "I'm tired of fighting with you. I think by now it's time to concede we're never going to see eye to eye and I don't plan on changing."

Amata shook her head, still red as anything with old anger flashing in her eyes.

"You're an idiot," she said again, turning for the door. "I just hope you realize it before you're forty."

And as Cynthia ran to the bathroom to empty her stomach for the second time that morning, she found herself wondering vaguely how nice it must be to live in such a small world, everything of any importance planned out with absolute certainty from start to finish by men who had died two hundred years ago.

And then, thinking about Butch and the way the sun would look on his hair, she wondered if they'd ever get out.


	21. Forget

35. Forget

Summary: They should just forget it, but they can't.

—0—

Butch glared at the wall of his hide-out, taking long, angry drags of his cigarette. Screw the doctor. Screw that son of a bitch Overseer. Screw them all. There was nobody in this goddamned vault or out of it going to tell him he couldn't see his best damn girl anymore. It just wasn't going down like that. He was sick to fucking death of this shit. Sick of being told when to sleep, when to eat, when to _breathe_. He was a Tunnel Snake, damn it, and Tunnel Snakes didn't take that shit from _nobody_.

Cynthia would come down to see him. He knew she would. Hell, he'd go up and see her, but he wasn't an idiot. Butch was a lot of things, but never an idiot. He knew better than to carry her off now. Maybe the doc was full of hot air, maybe he wasn't, but he still knew about the hideout so that made him number one on his People to Avoid list. Not that it mattered. Cynthia was his best damn girl. She'd come down. She'd sneak out if she had to. Hell, she'd done it before. It wasn't like they could just keep her locked up in the medical bay. She'd come down…

It was just taking a hell of a long time.

Butch ran a hand over his face, pushing the cigarette through the grating beside him with the other. He smoked too much. Maybe that was the problem. Or part of the problem, anyway. Hell, it wasn't like he wanted to be a goddamned choir boy or anything, but he could sort of understand the smoking thing. Cynthia only ever complained about the smoking—maybe her dad had a thing against it too. Made sense, actually. What with his being a doctor and all. Maybe if he quit smoking, cleaned up his act a little…

Butch grit his teeth, glaring at the ceiling. Screw that shit, he decided. He didn't change for _nobody_. Not even Cynthia. And he'd put up with a hell of a lot for Cynthia, overprotective bastard father be damned.

The door in the hall outside creaked open and Butch closed his eyes, sprawled on his back in the middle of the mattresses, waiting. It had to be Cynthia. Even if the doctor had spilled his goddamned guts, it was something close to midnight now—too late for the Overseer to be up and about. Unless he was sending Butch one of his little _warnings_. But then, seeing as how the Tunnel Snakes _were_ his warnings, who the hell was he going to send—Paulie? Mack didn't have the balls to square off with him face to face. Snide comments were one thing—coming after a guy on his own territory was another.

But despite knowing damn well who it was, Butch still relaxed at seeing Cynthia walk into the room. She looked like she'd been crying for an hour while rats nested in her hair, but she was wearing his jacket, coming to see _him_ and that made her the most goddamned beautiful woman in the world.

"Hey, babe," he said, grinning up at her as he ferreted the mentats out from under his pillow. "Took you awhile."

And it was funny the things you noticed after you knew a person awhile. Because Butch could swear he saw the tension go out of her shoulders as she shut the door behind her and crossed the room. And when she curled up into him like she was _made_ to fit right under his chin, it was funny how it made him forget every damn thing that had him ready to fight his way out of this tin can.

"I'm so goddamned tired of _fighting_," she murmured, pushing the top half of his suit farther down his waist so she could curl a little closer. "Argued with Dad for an hour and a half before Amata showed up and chewed me out for _existing_."

Butch shrugged and stared up at the ceiling.

"I don't know why the hell you talk to her anyway. Spoilt little daddy's girl."

"She wasn't always."

"Forget her. Forget all of 'em," he said, worming a hand up and under the jacket until he could feel her skin smooth and inviting against the palm of his hand. "What the hell do they know anyway?"

Cynthia giggled and turned to look up at him.

"I see you're a pillar of wisdom, as always, Butch."

"Oh, like you don't want to break outta this shithole as bad as me."

She stilled in his arms, her smile fading.

"We should do it," she said at last, so quietly he almost missed it. "We should find a way to get out."

Butch nodded slowly, tracing patterns on the ceiling with his eyes as he thought about all the stories his dad used to tell about Outside. If his dad could make it out there, hell, why couldn't they? Cynthia could shoot the eye out of a radroach from a corridor and a half away with a shitty BB gun older than she was. And he knew how to fight—really fight—the kind of fighting that could kill a guy if you weren't careful. Swipe a few small arms from the stockpiles, get his father's old sniper rifle out from under the bed—what the hell was stopping them besides an old idiot playing god?

"So we'll do it," he told her, reaching up to work the tangles out of her hair. "We'll run so far away from this place they'll forget they ever heard of us."

Cynthia laughed, tracing patterns on his stomach with the fingers of one hand.

"Is that a promise?"

"Hell yeah, that's a promise." He grinned, seeing the wastelands sprawling out in front of him already. "You and me, babe. Kicking ass and taking names."

"Sounds like fun."

And Butch didn't say it, but he was pretty damn sure he couldn't think of anything else he'd rather do. It sounded like fucking _heaven._


	22. Broken

21. Broken

Summary: A month has gone by and Butch is getting really sick of sneaking.

Author's Note: Please ignore Butch's bad typing. It hurts me too, but I doubt he's as much of a comma addict as I am. Also, he has a science skill of 30 – 100 so this scenario is totally plausible.

—0—

This was getting fucking ridiculous, Butch decided, staring at the back of Cynthia's head as Brotch droned on about something no one was ever going to need to know. She was _right there—_right _fucking_ there—and yet god forbid he _talk_ to her or it'd get back to the stupid doctor and all hell would break loose. And it certainly didn't help that her dad had her working so many clinic hours now she might as well be a _nun_ for all the more they saw each other. And yeah, he could sort of see the point of the whole practice-and-you-won't-kill-somebody-later thing, but there was practicing and there was _prison_ and the two things probably shouldn't look so goddamned similar.

Butch let his head fall with a heavy _thunk_ to the desk, deciding that there was a good possibility he'd die of boredom before he turned twenty. But then, even figuring out when _that_ would be was a goddamned trial because it depended on which birth certificate you were looking at—the real one his mom kept stashed away with his father's stuff or the fake one the Overseer had filed.

"Something you'd like to add, Mr. Deloria?" Brotch drawled, peering at him over the tops of his glasses.

In Christine's corner of the room, Butch heard somebody laugh and lifted his head from the desk with a monumental effort, thinking of all the things he'd _like to add_.

He'd_ like to add_ that this class was a joke and he was getting too damn old for this shit. He'd really _like to add_ that the Overseer was a corrupt son of a bitch driving the vault even further into the ground and what kind of goddamned brainwashing was going on that nobody remembered _anything_ except the shit the Overseer _said _you could remember? And while he was going around _adding something_, he'd damn well _like to add_ that he wasn't some kind of axe-murdering rapist and that Cynthia was old enough to fuck whoever she goddamned wanted to.

"You know what?" he said, slamming a hand down on the desk. "Screw this shit. I'm outta here."

For a second, the room was dead quiet as he stood up and strode for the door. But then Mack pulled his cigarettes from his pocket and lit up, snapping Brotch into attention. Butch heard him shouting from the hallway—something about delinquents and contraband narcotics, but Paulie was already at his side, Mack sniggering as he strode out of the room after.

"Good move, Deloria," he said, punching him in the back as he strode past. "If I had to sit in Amata's stench cloud much longer, I was gonna hurl."

"Whatever."

Butch shrugged, pulling out his own cigarettes and feeling like a world class idiot. As if the doctor needed another reason to prove he was a walking felony. He'd be twice as hard on Cynthia now. Probably wouldn't let her step outside the goddamned office until she was thirty and turning into a goddamned clone of her…

And suddenly, Butch had a brilliant idea.

*

Cynthia stared at the projection Brotch was lecturing about, trying to pay attention but finding the idea of strangling Christine with her own entrails to be far more attractive. She was back there just _yapping away_ and while Cynthia couldn't hear most of it, she'd heard her own name far too many times for comfort. That little bitch thought she was just queen of the fucking world. And everybody knew her mom was fucking around with the Overseer—or trying to anyway—but it wasn't like that was going to _do_ anything. That son of a bitch didn't play favorites with his own daughter; there was no way he'd give extras to some whore down in C level.

A flashing light caught the corner of her eye and Cynthia stopped, staring down at her Pip-Boy as words flashed across the screen.

**Hey baby, **it scrolled. **Check me out.**

Cynthia bit the inside of her cheek and forced her eyes back up onto the screen. Butch was an idiot. A world class, grade-A idiot that had just given her father even _more_ fodder for the Why Butch Fails as a Functioning Member of Society argument. But right now—if this wasn't some kind of virus everyone was reading—he was a fucking _genius._

**So… come here often?**

Trying hard to keep her eyes on the screen, Cynthia ever so casually snuck a glance at her screen and then ever so casually snuck a glance at Freddie's screen in front of her.

Butch was a genius.

**These things have a disabled program called an 'address locator' whatever the hell that is.**

"Unless your father is paging you, Miss. Barlow," Brotch snapped, catching her attention. "You'll be tested on this tomorrow so I suggest you pay attention."

Cynthia rolled her eyes and looked back at the screen, trying to read the map of… some continent that didn't exist anymore, probably.

"Sorry, Mr. B."

**I guess back when they made these things the program made sense. Whatever. You can type on it. That's the good thing.**

Cynthia slipped her hand under the desk and started pushing buttons, wondering if Butch knew enough of Morse Code to understand _I'm-going-to-fuck-your-brains-out-later-but-so-help-me-you'd-better-shut-up-now-before-I-kill-that-whore-Christine-for-saying-my-name-for-the-eighty-second-time-today._ Apparently not, as the screen continued to scroll text and Christine continued to send her dirty looks while muttering something about _Butch's taste in women—anything that moves, I swear_.

**So type something Igor. I'm hacked into your pip-boy so I can see it. **

Right, so… the map of… _Europe_ had a lot of little places on it before… it didn't have a lot of little places anymore. And there was… a thing… called the United Nations that lived… in… _Europe_… before it didn't…

**The useless button to the left of the screen will bring up the keyboard now. It projects though so watch it.**

Using all her skills at filing prescriptions into the computer while eavesdropping on her father's conversations, Cynthia brought up the keyboard projection and typed as quickly with one hand as she possibly could while still staring at the screen.

_**I'm in class, you dorkface, and Brotch is already giving me the death eye so knock it off.**_

Years of space invaders though had made Butch a fairly fast typist. After he finished laughing at her expense—and she'd known him long enough to know when he was laughing at her expence—the message wasn't long in coming.

**Come on. Even you have to admit this is pure genius. Now you won't die of boredom when your dad signs you up for the new nunnery.**

Cynthia started to type and froze, realizing that Brotch had just asked a question and was scanning the room for an answer. Thankfully, though, the ever chatty Christine was a more appealing target than the geeky doctor's kid. After all, it was far more fun to pick on somebody you knew would never be wielding a scalpel in your vicinity.

_**Look. You've got fifteen minutes before Brotch lets us out if he's not so pissed with your little performance he keeps us here forever. I'll meet you in the old access tunnel.**_

__Christine failed miserably in answering whatever question it was Brotch was smirking about and had to submit to Amata's overwhelming genius when it came to useless facts about long dead societies.

**What about Stanly?**

Overwhelming genius that was taking an awful long time to explain something that could not _possibly_ require that much explanation.

_**Well we won't **_**fuck**_** there then. We need to find somewhere my dad doesn't know about. The hideout's the first place he'll look for me when I don't show up for clinic.**_

Cynthia glanced at the clock on the wall, willing Amata and Brotch both to _stop talking_ and just run away together already. There was so much sheer geekish sexual tension flooding the room right now that—

Cynthia stopped, an idea occurring to her.

_**Butch—how sober is Ellen right now, do you figure?**_ she typed, grinning like an idiot as Brotch finally, _finally_ started to wind the lecture down._** Because there's no way in hell my dad will think to look there.**_


End file.
